The sky was dark as Felix flew though the city that was lit up once again by the nebula and other artifacts of space around the planet. He used the portal spires and zipped through them until he arrived back at the familiar white stone building that held Inscripticae along with dozens of other spatially expanded shops.

Heading inside, he walked into the shop but found it completely empty. He hopped into the air and peeked into the design room but didn’t see anyone through the window so he walked over to Aldan’s office and knocked.

“Come in.”

Felix opened the door and found Aldahn sitting at his desk tinkering with something tiny using a very long and very precise quill.

“You’re back.” Aldahn remarked without looking up.

“I am.”

“How’d it go?”

“Kinda shit I guess. No one died and no one is permanently hurt but…”

“Sounds like it could have been worse then.”

“Yeah… I guess I’ll just hang out until Fralyna get’s back. I take it she hasn’t finished the sword without me just yet, has she?”

Aldahn snorted, “Nope. Hasn’t even gotten the sword from her blacksmith yet.”

“Perfect… Hey uh… quick question, was the adventurer’s guild ever much busier than usual when you frequented it?”

“Haven’t been there in a while. It’s been pretty steady as long as I was there, no big fluctuations, at least nothing that’s lasted more than a term or so.” Aldahn shrugged.

“I see. Apparently it’s been super busy the last 5 epochs. Any idea what might cause that?”

Aldahn scoffed, “I don’t know, a god is making a move? Well, that alone wouldn’t do it. It could just be prep for the integration.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well integrations mean more people but it also means kind of a wave of events, dungeons and things like that. Big influx of resources too.”

“I see… Thanks, I’ll just be in the shop then.”

Aldahn nodded and continued working on whatever he was tinkering with.

Felix headed into the workshop and chose an empty station, one that wasn’t already claimed by a mess or project laying on top of it. He had a ton of things he wanted to do but the most urgent item on his mind was redoing all of the enchantments on his armor.

He had already identified issues with his current enchantments back before he had left the integration, now he actually had the tools to design something that addressed those issues. His encounter with the Drakeling swarm had also highlighted for him how much he needed solid defensive options.

Having his armor automatically react to the swarm would have been a terrible idea, like covering himself in honey to protect from a swarm of bears. However, it would have kept their claws from shredding through his armor and his health from dipping so low that he needed to drink a regeneration potion. In the future he was hoping it would be possible to make it so it was undetectable but he had no idea how to do that at the moment.

The first thing he did was go through the shaping nodes he knew. Whether or not he enchanted his armor to generate mana shields and use force to deflect attacks, he also wanted to create a Mage Armor spell. There weren’t shaping nodes for pauldrons or anything like that but Grim drew his attention to a book he had memorized from the store room.

The book detailed a method to create complex shapes a shaping node didn’t necessarily exist for. It wasn’t a complicated process but it was rather involved. Felix spent time testing and shaping all the different pieces of armor he would have to make mostly through trial and error. He was sure this spell already existed but he was also pretty sure it would cost him a lot of credits to just buy it. He also found it fun and thought it was good practice to create spells.

He created bracers, pauldrons, greaves and interlocking plates for his midsection and other areas that required flexibility. He spent hours working through all the different pieces, shaping them to satisfaction. He didn’t quite manage to finish shaping all the different pieces but he got about 75% of the way through when he was interrupted by a new face in the shop who walked right up to him.

A chromatic scaled Drakene wearing a cloak, pants, sandals and nothing else walked right up to his desk. Their shoes didn’t fully cover their feet but were more like fingerless gloves as their claws were exposed, which was why he considered them sandals. The pants were a long and billowy black silk and the cloak was completely black from the outside. From the inside though, the cloak was a kaleidoscope of colors that shifted and morphed in the light.

Looking into their chest, which was at eye height for Felix, he saw his face perfectly reflected thousands of times in their scales. The scales also reflected the interior of the cloak, which created a weird effect where each scale looked to be alive. Felix assumed that was the desired effect.

The Drakene didn’t look like he pleased to see him, likely due to his crossed arms and defensive posture but Felix introduced himself anyways.

“Hello. I’m Felix…”

Felix trailed off as the Drakene’s eyes wandered up and down Felix’s body. He stepped around the desk and continued to inspect him then walked all the way back to where he had been standing before.

“You’re the new enchanter then. I am Krinitor.” The Drakene man bowed deeply with one arm against his chest and the other extended off to the side.

“Uh…”

“Kraken leather?”

The out of the blue question completely threw Felix off, “… yes?”

“The style is a little… dated but, classy nonetheless. An excellent set. I take it you’re either a caster or a pugilist of some kind?”

“Caster derivative, yeah.”

“No cloak?”

“Not at the moment.”

“May I see your cloak?”

“Oh I just wear whatever I need like a warm pelt cloak in frigid climates for example. Haven’t found one in particular that I like just yet.” Felix lied.

“I see. Do you wear this all the time or is this simply your adventuring gear?”

“Uh… both? This is just what I wear… always? Should I have other clothes?”

“Of course you should.”

“I’ll have to go buy some then.”

“Yes, you should.” Krinitor nodded then walked off. He spoke so neutrally that it didn’t seem like he judged Felix at all, it was more like he was stating facts.

What the fuck was that…

Felix didn’t think about it too much and turned back to his work on the Mage Armor spell. He just barely managed to finish up the last of the initial shaping a few hours later when Fralyna along with Edemari walked into the workshop together.

“Oh Felix, you’re back.” Fralyna greeted him with a warm smile.

“I am. I hear the sword isn’t ready yet?”

“Don’t even get me started. The smith is really dragging his feet with this one. He complains about being too busy and all that but his forge isn’t even lit when I go check on him. ‘It’ll be done soon’ he says.”

Felix shrugged, “Alright well, I guess you can’t really rush something like that.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” Fralyna sighed as her shoulders dropped.

“I take it you finally met Krinitor?” Edemari smirked.

“I did, just a few hours ago. How did you know?” Felix frowned.

“I saw him sketching you in one of the meeting rooms.” Edemari’s smirk grew.

“I see. He just asked me about my clothes. I take it he’s sketching me in different outfits?” Felix shrugged.

“Yeah. He’s very… into fashion.” Fralyna smiled and cocked her head a little.

“Tried to get Fral and I to let him make us clothing that wasn’t… what was it?” Edemari looked at Fralyna.

“So out of fashion it was an offense to those around us.” Fralyna looked back at Edemari.

“Something like that.” Edemari nodded.

“Did you let him?” Felix looked at both of them.

“Not when he quoted us a price.” Edemari smirked.

Fralyna did some quick mental math, “Something in the neighborhood of 4 times what I make in an epoch?”

“Yeah triple that for me.” Edemari laughed, “Plus I took a look at his sketches and… They weren’t exactly my style.”

“Very fashionable though.” Fralyna gave them a very exaggerated nod.

“I didn’t realize fashion was… existed?” Felix shrugged, “I just assumed everyone would wear whatever they could get their hands on that was the strongest.”

“That’s what we do,” Edemari tilted her head towards Fralyna, “but apparently that’s an offense and whatnot. Most of the fashion trends are just based on the most popular or strongest god at the moment. Though… that hasn’t changed much… ever really…”

Edemari kind of trailed off at the end of her thought but before Felix could ask her to expand on it, Fralyna looked at Edemari but was clearly still talking to Felix, “Just… if he asks to design you a set…”

“Ask him how much it’ll cost first.” Edemari nodded.

“And maybe make sure he shows you a sketch before you agree… if you can afford it.” Fralyna scrunched up her nose and giggled.

“Yeah.” Edemari shrugged and nodded.

“I see. Thanks for the… tips.” Felix smiled.

They nodded then walked off together, giggling all the way up to the design room that overlooked the workshop.

Instead of turning back to his Mage Armor spell, Felix looked at the time and decided he would work on assembling it all together later. Now that it wasn’t the middle of the night, he headed out and used his map to find himself a haircut and shave followed by a bath. The haircut was easy to find even when Felix limited himself to pacifist barbers. For the bath, he simply went back to the same place he had gone last time.

While he had some idle time flying and being pampered, he manually filled his batteries to make sure they were full and ready, since he didn’t opt for the automatic recharging versions.

Now, he was much cleaner and more presentable, not that he overly cared but his hair had been getting annoyingly long. He headed over to the Valtrusiar: The School of Competitive Avoidance and Dodging. Walking through the front door, he found Kukhomihto standing at the edge of the training area deep in thought. The course that previously filled the room was completely gone and all that was left was a field of grey sand.

He waited for a couple minutes then started to doubt whether or not Kukhomihto even knew he was there. He walked up next to him and introduced himself just in case.

“Hi Kukhomihto? I’m Felix. I was here a bit ago asking about classes and whatnot?”

Kukhomihto spoke without moving anything but his mouth, “I remember.”

Felix squinted, trying desperately to read anything from the man, “I was hoping for… tutelage?”

The man turned to Felix with a very stern expression and looked at him for a few seconds then nodded, “Call me Mihto. One time fee of 10,000 D and I will provide you with all of the spells you will need. We will tailor the spells to your spell list then you give me 500 D and I will teach you for an hour.”

Felix nodded and accepted the transaction screen that appeared for the first 10,000 D. His first instinct was to ask Aldahn if 10k D was overpriced but ultimately, it wasn’t much to him and the prospect of more spells was very enticing.

Mihto nodded to Felix then led him to the same office room they had met in before. He pulled a large tome out from underneath the desk then looked up at Felix, with the same stern expression he always seemed to wear, one that made him look like he was constantly about to scold Felix.

Mihto stared directly into Felix’s eyes, “How many spells on your list will you dedicate to this?”

“Uh… All of them?”

He didn’t react to that and simply flipped through the book to one of the later pages then turned it towards Felix.

“These work well together.” He pointed to a grouping of 7 spells that each seemed to be some sort of mobility spells from Felix’s first glance. He looked through the spells and was about to memorize them then quickly took a look at how long it would be until the entire book in front of him was scanned. He only had another 20 seconds so he stalled a little and pretended to look them over very carefully.

His ruse was only partially a ruse as he was actually examining the spells. For the most part, they seemed to use force but other than that, he wasn’t sure what they actually did. A lot of the spell components he was looking at were completely novel to him.

“If you do not like these spells or have more slots, there are other spells in this book. Now that you have paid the initial fee, you may come into this room at any time and switch your spells.”

Felix felt a tiny pang of guilt for scanning the book without permission but that quickly subsided considering he had full permission to read through the book at will.

“So this book contains a bunch of spells then?”

Mihto gave him a single sharp nod, “Depending on how many spell slots you dedicate, the spells are more or less complex.”

“What if I only dedicated a couple slots, what spells would you recommend then?”

Mihto reached out and flipped towards the start of the book and pointed to a set of spells that were more complicated than even the portal spell forms Felix knew.

“What do these… do?”

“Many things.”

“The ones you showed me before, what do those do?”

“Less things, individually.”

Felix gasped in realization, “Oh wait… so you use less slots you get more versatile spells. You use more slots and you get more variety so you have more options to choose from?”

Mihto frowned in a way that indicated Felix was close to right, “Less things, less mana.”

“Wait so the more complex spells can do the same things as the less complex ones but they are less efficient?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Thank you. Let’s just say, out of curiosity, if I had hundreds of spell slots… what spells would you recommend?”

Mihto reached behind him and picked up a different book that Felix hadn’t even noticed before and placed it on top of the other already open book.

“Base spells.” Mihto said as he opened the book to the first page and pointed.

Looking at the book, the spells seemed to be a combination of super complicated spells and very simple spells. Some were only slightly more complicated than the spells Felix used now. Others were the most complicated spells Mihto had shown him. Felix spent some time flipping through the book until the book was completely scanned then Mihto led him back out into the main chamber.

“No spells, no skills.” Mihto looked at Felix who nodded in acknowledgement.

Mihto did something and all of a sudden, the large grey sandbox in the middle of the room completely changed. The sand morphed and floated into the air until it transformed into a series of platforms that led from one end to the other. Mihto pointed and Felix walked over to the start of the course then looked back over at Mihto.

He didn’t seem like he was going to tell him to start or count him down so Felix just went for it. He reluctantly disabled his energy cycling and Reaper’s Movement, as Mihto had said no skills, and even drained his body of energy to starve his muscles. He wanted to return to basics, show himself completely raw to Mihto and then build up from there. He hopped off the edge onto the first platform and found it was as solid as stone, despite being clearly made of grey powder.

Felix didn’t exactly rush himself but he also didn’t move slowly. He wanted Mihto to have a good idea of where he was at so he could get the most out of his tutelage. There was no desire in him to show off or hold back. Any of that would have been a waste of both of their time.

After his first run through, Mihto did something and the entire course shifted. It was very similar to the last one but the platforms were in different locations and were all about half the size of the last ones. He once again ran and jumped across the platforms and Mihto shrunk them once again. This time Felix had to slow himself down so he didn’t miss any of them as they were barely bigger than his foot alone.

He made it to the other side and this time, Mihto actually offered him direction. Felix’s footing and steps had morphed over time as he had been practicing the Dragon’s Dance, so he had some idea of how he should be moving and stepping. It was a little awkward for him without spells and energy cycling but he wouldn’t have said his footing and movement was bad.

Mihto didn’t say much but he had a lot of adjustments. At first he had Felix turning his foot in a slightly different way then he had him run the course 20 times. Then, he had Felix bend his ankles, then his knees slightly more or less depending on the angles of the platforms and the distance to his next platform. He had Felix run through the course another 20 times with each adjustment in mind.

He continued to point out minor adjustments to Felix then had him ingrain them as much as possible by running the course with them in mind. He still slipped up and felt himself falling back into old habits, 20 times wasn’t nearly enough to make it instinct, but he was getting better and he was feeling the effects.

Though he essentially had unlimited energy, he could still tell how much he was expending and through Mihto’s tutelage, he was getting more efficient. His muscles were being used more appropriately and directly, instead of being slightly twisted. He landed on the platforms and found himself standing and feeling stable instead of having to immediately slightly adjust himself. On top of all that, he found himself able to jump farther than before, even with his muscles completely starved of energy.

By the time Mihto had started to adjust Felix’s waist, many hours had passed and Felix was starting to have too much he had to keep in his head and think about. He had a good idea now of what to work on so he bid Mihto farewell and decided he would come back once he had completely solidified Mihto’s adjustments. Once it was all instinctual to him, he would have Mihto further adjust him.

After leaving the Valtrusiar school, Felix headed straight for the library. He had quite a few things he wanted to look up and even a few things he wanted to test.

He entered the general section of the library and didn’t bother summoning a librarian just yet. Instead he walked right over to a shelf and confirmed his earlier hypothesis that he could not, in fact, scan books he couldn’t see. He figured he could probably upgrade the skill to get there eventually but he still wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to do with the skill. The skill was not something he could do on his own and based on what Aldahn had said, that wasn’t the best idea.

Even if he kept it, because it was incredibly useful, he had no idea how he wanted evolve it other than a vague notion that maybe he could use it to read memories. That idea was a long shot though and he didn’t have any clear path from the current skill to that goal, in mind.

With that experiment complete, Felix had Grim prepare himself and the mental library then he started to slowly walk through the shelves with his Scan Literature skill active. He was mostly testing to try and find the limit of his mind, how much his library could actually hold, but he didn’t just walk around and wait.

While he had no idea how he would possibly scan books in a radius on his own, he figured he might be able to learn how his skill was doing it. As he walked through the shelves, Felix focused in on the skill itself. His goal was to get even an inkling of an idea as to what it was actually doing.

He found it incredibly hard to pinpoint and ended up disabling everything he could to try and isolate it. He disabled all of his skills and even found himself stilling the aether around him so it didn’t interfere with his mana senses. He couldn’t keep it perfectly still as he was in a magical library that used mana in complex ways but he settled on keeping it as calm as he could.

He focused in on each of his senses, one by one, cycling through them until he finally settled on his soul senses. Those were the senses he was the least familiar with so he couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to him like this was the main focus of the skill. Somehow, it seemed to be using the ambient Anima to both sense and even read the books around him.

Ding You have become more proficient with the General skill: [Epic] Scan Literature (Initiate XVI => Initiate XIX)

Woah, that’s a lot more than I was expecting. Actually… I wasn’t expecting it to go up at all, still that seems like a lot. I guess it was an important insight or realization?

Felix sighed in relief a little as he had been growing increasingly worried that the skill was actually entirely system fuckery and not actually a skill at all. This meant he didn’t need to get rid of the skill and instead, he could learn to do it all on his own. Then he could actively increase his proficiency in the skill and evolve it in any direction he wanted.

It had taken him a half hour to get an idea of how his skill worked and by that point, his library was about 80% full according to Grim’s estimate of it’s physical size. He didn’t actually want to find out what would happen if he tried to overfill it in case it hurt him or some information leaked out to make room. Unfortunately though, he had no way of knowing if his mental library was actually getting close to full or if it was just the physical constraints of the building he had visualized when he first put it together.

He and Grim agreed he had to find out so he chose an empty spot in the library and entered his mental palace where he found Grim. Looking around him, it finally looked like a real library to him, now that almost all of the shelves were actually filled with books. What he was going to try to do was to expand the library itself. His skill mentioned that he would have to destroy the library first, which would cause all the memories to be lost, but he was hoping there was another way.

He didn’t really need to keep all the information in the library, just the information he had in there before his most recent stroll through the Telviras library. He had had Grim isolate that information so he could easily separate it out and find a way to preserve it.

Felix turned to Grim, “Before we do anything. We should have a backup just in case. Ideally more than one.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You know how Fralyna and I are going to use a soul gem for the sword? And how a section of the Telviras library is memory with soul gems?”

“Yeah…”

“First backup, I look into soul gems and see if I can store all this. Second backup, if soul gems are just crystals with souls bound to them, why couldn’t I store memories in my own soul?”

“You can… issue is they don’t always come back out the same…”

“What do you mean?”

“Your soul isn’t built to handle memories with concrete information, it’s more about experiences, emotions, trauma that kind of thing.”

“So the crystal helps to stabilize the soul and the memory stored inside then?”

Grim shrugged, “That seems to be the case, yeah.”

“You were designed to hold and preserve information, how do you do it?”

Grim chuckled, “I’m a book. That’s kind of what books do.”

“But not everything is just written out on your pages right?”

Grim nodded, “Nope. That’s exactly what happens.”

“Oh… Can you hold a backup of this information for me then?”

Grim bowed slightly for effect, “I can and already did.”

“Perfect. That’s three then. I’ll go look into soul ge- any chance we scanned a book on soul gems at some point?”

“Sort of, they’re mentioned a few times. I don’t think they’ll be big enough to hold this much information or you would have to buy a lot of them.” Grim gestured to the shelves around them.

“Alright scratch that then. Two backups should be enough. I’ll at least try to store this in my Soul Garden and we’ll just see what happens.”

Felix thought about the best way to move the books then realized he was overthinking it and shifted his consciousness to his Soul Garden. He walked over to the open grassy field and summoned the information he wanted from his head. It took a few moments of intent and focus but he managed to replicate the book shelves and have them appear before him.

He quickly pulled out and flipped through a couple of the books and found they seemed to be exactly the same as he remembered them. He had no intention of leaving it up to chance though so he decided he would wait a little while and see if they degraded.

The first thing he did was something he had been planning on doing already. Now that he was learning something that suited him much better than the Dragon Dance, he was inclined to drop it entirely. At least for the time being, he wasn’t going to have it be a part of his daily routine anymore.

Instead, he walked over to the large open sandy area of his Soul Garden and focused in on his memory of the course Mihto had created for him. He had the sand morph and form something similar but with a different layout. Unlike Mihto’s course that required him to shift it somehow, Felix’s course wasn’t limited by anything other than his imagination. Though he wasn’t going to get too wild with gravity switching directions or anything just yet, he could at least make it endless.

He hopped over to the beginning and started leaping through the course with the platforms moving beneath him at a steady pace. With no air resistance, his speed in the air when he jumped was maintained so he effectively had a perfect treadmill. It ate up some of his focus to keep it generating and moving but he decided it was worth it.

He could have simply teleported himself from the end to the start repeatedly but that put a hard stop in his concentration. This way, even if generating the course was a slight distraction, he could keep himself focused on how he was moving without having to stop and reset himself.

Felix pared down his focus to just his feet then, only once that was instinctual, did he think about his ankles, then his knees and so on. He had Grim stop him once he had spent a few hours of Soul Garden time then he checked on the books he had copied and stored in his soul.

As far as he could tell, the information hadn’t shifted, changed or degraded in any way. Felix willed the information in his soul to resynchronize with the information in his head one last time then moved himself back to his mind palace. Even with two backups of the information he wanted to keep, Felix fully intended on keeping the information in his head from being destroyed anyways.

In theory, at least in Felix’s mind, he wasn’t actually reconstructing anything. All he wanted to do was renovate a little. He realized, especially after having visited the Telviras library, that he was limiting himself for no reason. HIs library didn’t need to be physically possible, he just had to be able to picture it. With that in mind, he spent some time designing something that wouldn’t require him to renovate again anytime soon.

He thought about making it extra dimensional but quickly scrapped that idea because although he had some familiarity with it, it wasn’t enough for him to be confident in his visualization. The best he could do for now was simply have it be endless. He saw no reason why he couldn’t walk between shelves of books and have the central area of the library repeat itself endlessly, almost like having mirrors on both walls.

That way he could be sure the limits to how much he was storing would be the limits of his own mind and not actually the limits of the physical space he had visualized.

He also didn’t limit himself to having it be endless in just one direction either. Felix had a solid visualization of a non-Euclidean space and so, no matter how many stairs he ascended, the ceiling would remain the same distance above him.

He had used a mind palace to study and remember information back on earth. That had evolved into a skill where The System had helped him in visualizing and creating something more solid and capable. In theory though, all this was in his head. He saw no indication that The System was creating the library or maintaining it so, he didn’t really see why he couldn’t bend the skill to his will a little bit. He was pretty sure The System was helping keep things stable and just making the process easier.

If he was feeling particularly daring, he considered even disabling or dropping the skill entirely and trying to replicate it himself. Unfortunately, he wasn’t that confident so he settled on pushing the limits of the skill instead. He also wasn’t quite ready to not have The System helping out, as minor as it may have been.

Walking over to the edge of the library, right up to the wall Felix simply pushed. He focused in on the new visualization he had created and focused his intent on morphing the library to this new form.

He pushed both physically and mentally against the wall until all of a sudden, all the resistance he had been pushing against simply vanished. He saw the center of the library before him and turning around, he saw the center of the library behind him. He had created a library with endless shelves in every direction and a core section, with the tables, that would remain a constant no matter where he was.

Walking back to the center of the library behind him, he found all the information he had backed up, exactly where he had left it. Before returning his consciousness to his body so he could review his skill, he quickly compared his mind’s version of the information against Grim’s and his soul’s backup. They all seemed to agree so Felix returned to his body but, left the information in his soul both as another backup and as an experiment.

Ding You have altered the General skill: [Special] Memory Palace (Initiate IV => Initiate XI)

Felix pulled up the skill description and shook his head when he saw the minor changes to it’s description.

[Memory Palace (Special) Using the mental map of a location you are familiar with you can memorize a plethora of abstract information. This skill allows you to construct a Memory Palace from scratch, using this mental map to store information directly. Visiting this Memory Palace you can retrieve any of the information stored within. This skill can be upgraded. The capacity of your memory palace is dependent on your intelligence, the size of your palace and the general capacity of the user. You may reconstruct your palace from scratch at any time by first destroying your current palace. Any memories left behind upon destruction will be lost. You may also make small changes to the library by re-visualizing it. ]

Even though that was a minor copy change, I can’t complain about the skill proficiency. Not exactly sure if it actually does anything for me but it does feel good.

The more you understand about a skill the better right?

Felix nodded, Yeah, then I can upgrade and enhance it with that understanding.

And you’ll be more proficient with just using it. You should be able to get more out of the skill, in theory at least.

You know… given how my soul was able to store all that information… I have an idea.

Grim quickly read through his current thought process, Yeah I have no idea what that would do. Be careful though.

It’s the best idea I’ve got.

Maybe let’s read some books on mind enhancement first.

Of course, I’m not just gonna jump right into it.

Now that his mental library was visually bigger, Felix cruised through the Telviran library and continued to scan random books around him in an attempt to find the limits of his mind. His best guess was that he would start to forget some things in favor of the new information and worst case, if it was the information he wanted to keep, he currently had two backups.

He found himself walking through the shelves with plenty of time on his hands and currently no interest in watching his skill work so instead, he practiced creating spell forms. It had been some time since he had practiced doing so and found he had gotten a little complacent. He had been stuck using the same spells over and over for such a long time that he hadn’t felt the need to practice as much.

Now that he had messed around with portal spell forms, seen enchantments that were too complicated for him to understand and had new spells from Mihto’s books, he felt the need to train again. He picked out a handful of the most complicated spells in Mihto’s books and created them as fast as he could then dismissed them. He rotated to a different spell form and repeated the process.

To get the most out of the time he had, he also started pushing his range as much as he could. He cast the spells right on the edge of where he could control mana proficiently, which was a couple meters, then dismissed them. Once he had cycled through all the spells a few times and had a decent visualization of them, he started casting as many of them as he could, at once.

He was disappointed to find he could only manage three of them at once if he really focused and if cast them close to his body. If just one of them was cast at the limit of his range, he could barely cast even one more close to himself. He knew these were more complicated and he reassured himself by casting a dozen Fire Bolts all over the place.

His original idea of spell levels and slots was resurfacing in his mind and giving him confidence that he wasn’t falling behind, he had instead leveled up in a sense and just had to get used to things. It took them another hour until Grim called Felix into his Memory Palace.

He showed him a specific book, not one he had tried to preserve but just a random scan from the library, and opened it to reveal blurry pages. Felix returned to his body and walked back over to the specific book and confirmed that it did in fact, have information inside of it.

In theory, that meant the capacity of his Memory Palace was somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred thousand books. It was more than he had imagined and far more than he had any use for but, it was still a limit and he had every intention of breaking it.

With all of his experiments complete, Felix headed over to a librarian’s desk and summoned some help. He had the librarian retrieve a couple of books for him while Grim got rid of the useless information he had scanned. They ended up keeping a handful of the books around and some notes from others but he had been walking through a section of the library on the history of different ingredients in mundane cooking. There wasn’t much information they wanted to keep so the vast majority of it was forcefully forgotten.

Felix found it both odd and concerning that he couldn’t actually feel his mind getting full and felt nothing when Grim tossed some of the books out. He thought he might feel at least a little burdened then unburdened but even focusing on it, he felt nothing. He definitely wanted some kind of warning system in place for if it got full in the future but had no idea where to start with that.

The librarian returned after a few minutes with multiple tall stacks of books that he placed on a desk. Felix scanned the books then had the librarian put them away again, much to their confusion. He dismissed them for the time being and had Grim sift through them while he flew back out of the library.

He didn’t fly far though and simply flew over a couple doors to the memory section of the library mostly out of curiosity. Grim was occupied sorting through all the books they had scanned then augmenting the information by posing questions to The Guild of Answers.

The books covered a wide variety of topics including what were gods, who were the current gods and what were their relative strengths. There was even one on previous fashion trends, mostly because he found it interesting that they were dictated by the strength of the gods.

He had also had the librarian find him books on spells, enchantments and nodes for each. Some books on mana, mana cores, mana channels, mana computers and mind enhancement. Impressive feats throughout the multiverse, historical accounts on multiversal records involving mana and mana control especially.

That covered everything he had had questions about recently that he thought the library could answer and if he had forgotten anything, he could always come back.

Flying into the memory section, Felix was somewhat surprised the library looked so different. There were no open shelves but instead, Felix walked into some kind of lobby. He walked up to the front desk, provided his registration then was directed to a room where he waited. It took almost 10 minutes for someone to enter the room and help him, which was way longer than he had ever had to wait for a librarian in the general section.

He explained he was mostly just curious about the memory crystals but recently he had been looking into the topics of gods, spells, enchantments and mana.

“Not sure what we have for mana but gods, that we can definitely do. I can bring out some of our most popular god based memories?” The librarian offered.

“Sure, that sounds great.”

The librarian nodded to him then vanished once again through the door they had entered from. It took them a barely a minute to return with a few small gems that looked like large marbles more than anything to Felix.

The librarian sat down at the table, across from Felix, then placed one of the marbles in a small divot at the center of the table.

“Please touch the memory orb with one finger.”

Felix nodded then reached forwards and touched the orb with his index finger.

“Now simply imagine you are pushing a small stream of yourself from your body and into the orb. It may take a few tries at first. Do your best to hold on as well no matter how intense the memory gets.”

Felix nodded in acknowledgement then followed along with their instructions. He knew memory orbs were soul gems so he imagined a stream of anima being pushed through his finger into the gem and immediately felt his senses go dark.

He still had access to his senses, he could feel them but, it was like they were distant and a curtain had been drawn over them. Instead, they were replaced in a sense. It was nothing like watching a movie or playing a video game, instead it was like he was the person in the memory.

Felix walked through a town that had clearly been ravaged by some sort of battle. The earth was a dark gray gravel and ash while the buildings themselves, the small homes that lined the streets along with the shops and churches up ahead were all smoldering and damaged. He saw rooves caved in, walls with large holes in them and worst of all, corpses.

Everywhere he looked, there were pools of blood that soaked into the ashen ground and suits of armor that did little to hide the eviscerated corpses they held. Weapons and scraps of armor were strewn about and he felt himself stumble towards the central square ahead of him.

The fountain in the center of the square was broken and no longer produced any water. The drain was completely clogged and so, the liquid in the basin was permanently stained from the corpses at the bottom of it and contained mostly blood. Despite the smell of copper and rot permeating the air, getting stronger as he approached, Felix was so thirsty.

It didn’t matter to him. He couldn’t think about what kind of disease he might get from drinking the thick red liquid, he just needed to drink. He stumbled and tripped over the loose cobblestone road, smacking his knees and palms against the road but even then, his strength failed him. His head crashed down against the stones and bloodied his brow. He could feel his blood pouring down over his face but he ignored it all.

He reached forwards and dug his nails into the road before him then pulled, dragging his body along the road. The loose rags he wore did nothing to prevent his skin from tearing and breaking. His nails cracked and bent but none of that mattered, if he didn’t drink soon, he would surely perish.

Felix dragged himself along, pushing aside the corpses and discarded weapons thinking about nothing but the pain in his throat. He finally reached up and pulled on a corpse that hung over the edge of the fountain and pulled himself up but, he weighed too much. The corpse fell and toppled over him before rolling into the street. In his mind he cursed at how it made no sense that he was so lacking in water and yet, he still weighed more than this corpse.

He instead reached for the lip of the basin and pushed off the cobbles with his other hand. He pushed with the last of his strength and pulled his chin over the edge. He couldn’t pull himself any further though so he reached forwards with his shaky hands and cupped the warm liquid.

He pulled the viscous red fluid towards him but he was stopped. A delicate hand held his wrist with just enough strength to stop him from drinking. They didn’t clamp down, they didn’t need to. Felix didn’t have the strength left to fight them. He didn’t have the strength to resist as he felt his body lifted into the air and over to the fountain.

Instead of the fountain though, he found himself laid carefully against the softest white dress he had ever felt. He felt a hand reach behind his neck and hold up his head as the cleanest water he had ever seen was gently poured into his mouth. It was just slightly cooler than the air and it tasted sweet as it passed over his tongue.

As he drank he looked up through the tears that, despite the dehydration, welled in his eyes. He saw the face of a young woman, no older than 25 with brown hair, brown eyes and the most delicate features. Though they were far too young to have given birth to Felix, he was far older than her, he looked up and he felt like this had to be his mother.

Her embrace, her delicate touch and the feeling of warmth and comfort that filled him as she looked into his eyes. Her expression of deep caring and a feeling of unconditional love filled his heart. All of it brought him back, reminded him of something he had never actually experienced before, but something he knew nonetheless. It was a feeling everyone recognized even if they had never felt it themselves firsthand, the feeling of motherly love.

Suddenly Felix looked around and found himself in a grey room sitting across from someone with his finger on a marble and he stumbled back, leaning his chair against the wall behind him. He quickly came to his senses, filtered out the memory and separated himself from it then, immediately pulled his flask out of his soul space.

He hadn’t felt thirsty before but the memory was so real and visceral, he drank nonetheless. He ended up rolling it until he found something relatively neutral which was only flavored with some vegetable that he could barely taste.

The librarian nodded knowingly, no laughter or judgement in their eyes, “That’s the most common reaction to that one.”

Felix scoffed, “That one’s popular?”

“Most people who come back to watch it skip through right to the end.”

Felix sighed, “Oh, I didn’t realize I could do that.”

“Sure, it’s a memory. Just think ahead and you kind of skip forwards. Ready for the next?”

Felix relaxed into the chair, “In a second… who was that?”

“Oh… that, is The Holy Mother.”

Grim added some context from the books he had been parsing, A neutral god.

What does neutral mean?

We’ll talk about it later. They seem to be one of the stronger gods from what I’ve gathered so far.

Felix mentally transmitted his confusion to Grim, Why?

I’m expecting… hoping, one of the other memories will give you a little more context.

Alright.

Felix nodded to the librarian, “Ok, I’m ready for the next.”

The librarian nodded and quickly swapped the orb on the desk for another. Felix had no idea if the colors actually meant anything but the last was milky white and this one was a light green color. Felix took a breath and readied himself then reached forwards with his finger then dove into the memory.

Felix stood on the dirt road just outside of his house and, along with each and every one of his neighbors, looked upwards. The sky above was dark and filled with clouds that brightened in flashes and shook the ground with distant thunder. Before them the mountain that had sat at the center of their village for centuries, the same one he and his father before him had climbed to pray upon each and every epoch… The mountain was split right down the middle like a godly blade had simply cleaved it in two.

From the depths of the ground where the mountain had split poured a geyser of bright red heat. It reached far above where the mountain peak had once stood and sprayed out in every direction. The ground shook as it cried molten tears into the sky adding to the quake below them. None of his neighbors, his friends and even his family ran though. They all stood, frozen, and simply watched as death approached, because there was no where to run.

Behind them, covering their escape, was a wave that crested into the heavens. The wave was not close enough to spray them just yet, but it was big enough to hide the horizon despite it’s distance. Along with it, came more rumbling of the earth, the stone beneath their feet trembled and cracked.

A globule of molten stone fell a few hundred meters to his right. Looking over, he saw a house get destroyed and watched as the people around it scurried. He could even feel the heat as the magma splashed around them. He took no step though, his muscles did not tense. He stared death in the face and the inevitability of it kept him calm.

He closed his eyes and took a breath, breathing in the fresh air that came before a storm, the ash that signified his coming doom and the salty ocean mist that he had grown to love. Truly, this was the end of times. The apocalypse, it had arrived. Felix opened his eyes, oddly calm, ready to accept and face his death but as he looked ahead, he saw not death but a man.

Just barely, at the edge of his vision, floating through the ash, flying high above the mountain. Felix couldn’t see what the man wore or what he looked like, he could barely see his silhouette. What he did next though, he saw with perfect clarity.

The man reached up lifting a staff above his head. The end of the staff glowed a bright cerulean light then all of a sudden, a massive circle appeared above the split mountain. The circle fell and swallowed the geyser of lava as it descended into the mountain and disappeared.

With one imminent source of death averted, Felix turned around and watched as another massive circle appeared and suddenly, a gap the size of the island was carved out of the tidal wave behind them. The circle disappeared and all that was left was a relatively rough and high tide.

Looking up, Felix saw one last circle appear and drag itself through the storm clouds above, swallowing them whole as if it was painting a blue sky above them. Within seconds, the apocalypse was gone and Felix realized how wrong he was. He had not opened his eyes and seen a man, he had opened his eyes seen a god and he had witnessed the miracles they brought along with them.

Felix coughed as the memory subsided and the feeling of ash in his throat lingered. He took another drink from his flask just to replace the sensation and reset his nerves then pulled his finger away from the marble on the desk. He nodded to the librarian and they switched the orbs out once again.

Before reaching out again, he looked up at the librarian, “Which one was that?”

“That was Edras.”

Grim added some more context, Not a neutral god. Also one of the strongest it seems.

Felix reached forwards and touched the orb before him again, this one was filled with an ominous dark blue cloud, almost like an arcane storm trapped within. Felix took one last swig of his flask then put it down and pushed himself into the memory.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Felix stood on the top of a mountain and peered hundreds of kilometers away, through the clouds around him, to the peak of another mountain. Using his high perception score and Farsight skill, he saw clearly, a man, standing atop the mountain peak before him, as if he were a mere 20 meters away.

The man was massive, though it was hard to tell from here with nothing around him, he knew. He had seen this man before. He had chased him down and he was here specifically to watch what happened next.

The man stood atop the mountain wearing thick animal hides around his legs though his feet were bare. His torso, though not protected by any armor or clothing, was covered in intricate tattoos that allowed him to unleash and channel his power. He had seen it before, he knew what was coming and even still, he couldn’t help but stare in awe at the raw power before him.

The man’s hair was long and brown and met his unruly beard just below his chin where it all blended together and was completely homogenous. His brow was furrowed and his eyes glared upwards with such intensity, the look alone, though it wasn’t directed at him at all, sent chills running throughout Felix’s body.

He pulled the blade of his massive axe up out of the permanent ice below him with a simple flick of his wrist as shadow descended through the blizzard above. Though he couldn’t see the creature itself through the clouds, their silhouette gave them away. They blocked out the meager amount of light that poured through the clouds and cast a shapely shadow upon the mountain.

The creature was so large, it would have been too colossal to live within the mountains below them, its body almost half their size. The shadow of its tail stretched well past the base of the mountain and into the valley below. Though Felix stood hundreds of kilometers away, he was worried he still might be too close as he saw the creature’s wingspan.

The man on the mountain continued to glare into the sky and suddenly, his eyes started glowing a light blue, almost white light. They brightened until suddenly, small sparks of lightning arced out of them into the snow flakes and hail around him. It was subtle and had Felix not been focusing in on it specifically, not known it was coming, he would have missed it from this distance. It was all part of the experience though and it was something he had to capture.

The head of the creature above finally broke through the clouds and it’s massive scales were almost as large as the man on the mountain. It’s massive toothy maw opened a little and blew a stream of smoke over the man. The smoke simply passed over him, a few seconds later it subsided and he stood perfectly still, in the exact same place as if nothing had happened at all.

The dragon descended further and each of it’s six claws dug into the ice of the mountain to hold itself aloft. It’s long neck twisted upwards and around the man but he simply stared forwards, undeterred.

The man slowly lifted his axe into the air then lazily swung it to the side. The dragon shifted far faster than it should be allowed to move at its size and twisted it’s neck to avoid the almost invisible blade that flew by.

The dragon almost seemed to chuckle then the man nodded. He crouched down a little and vanished. Felix quickly darted his eyes around but it was the dragon that gave his new position away as it recoiled from pain on it’s neck.

It’s scales all clicked into place creating a cascading noise as they clacked against each-other and the man jumped back off the dragon again. Felix looked around once more and this time, the dragon jumped into the air and beat it’s massive wings, almost blowing him away with the wind they created.

Felix had to use his shielding skill to keep himself standing and alive. Even with it’s long cooldown and high resource cost, it was well worth it. It would at least remain for a minute so he should have enough time to catch the rest of the battle.

The dragon ascended into the air just a kilometer or so and twisted about in circles. Felix tried his best but it was hard to follow the fight with the man leaping around, disappearing every time his knees bent and the dragon twisting around, constantly blocking the view.

Felix could see enough though, the man jumped from neck to back to underbelly and smashed his axe into the dragon’s scales. Though it looked to be completely ineffective to him, the dragon seemed to be writhing around to avoid further strikes.

Suddenly the battle ramped up. A flash of light on the dragon’s shoulder caused Felix to instantly use his Far Sight skill to zoom in further. The tattoos on the man’s arms suddenly lit up perfectly matching his eyes as lightning arced along his body. The arcs were limited to his arms at first but as soon as he swung his axe down, a swing the dragon had no hope of avoiding, a massive bolt of lightning was called down from the sky above and struck the dragon along with the blade.

As Felix’s vision readjusted, he saw a massive bloody gash in the dragon’s shoulder and he couldn’t help but smile. He quickly looked around and found the man back on the mountain glaring up at the dragon as it flew off a kilometer away then stretched it’s maw open.

Even through the blizzard that raged around them, Felix saw smoke begin to pour out of the dragon’s body. It’s scales clattered against each-other once again and suddenly they were all backlit by a growing yellow light. Within just a moment of their maw opening, the dragon released a beam of searing yellow fire that struck the man dead on. The beam was man times taller and wider than he was so there was no doubt in Felix’s mind that he had been hit.

Felix felt a pang of worry growing in his stomach as the yellow backlight on the dragon’s scales turned into actual jets of flame all along it’s body. The flames grew and brightened as they slowly shifted from yellow over to white.

The flames poured into the mountain and melted the stone around it creating a massive crater as the ice that had once covered the mountain peak was instantly vaporized. The beam widened and the dragon’s head leaned forwards then the mountain broke as the fire finally poured out of the other side, having melted cleanly through.

Then, the flames kept going as they slowly shifted over to a shade of blue. For the first time, Felix had to readjust himself in the memory because the shade of blue was not a shade he had ever actually seen before. It was outside his visual range but he quickly re-immersed himself so he could watch the rest.

Molten rock sprayed outwards and the mountain continued to melt just from the sheer heat of the flames pouring through it. The dragon released one last burst of flames that exploded outwards over the mountain, expanding the crater, before it finally closed it’s maw.

Standing exactly where he had been, on a thin cliff of stone, stood the massive axe wielding god with bright green chest tattoos and a smoldering body. The stone beneath him was a perfect triangle as if the beam had been been split around him, everything behind him completely protected. He looked up at the dragon, bent his knees, then disappeared. This time, his tattoos glowed a yellow color as he smashed down into the dragon’s neck.

Instead of digging in with the blade, it almost seemed like he was hitting it with a hammer as the dragon was smashed into the ground a little faster with every strike. He smashed his axe into it’s neck one last time when it finally crashed into the ground then leapt once again.

Felix found the god standing on the ground next to it’s head this time and he held it’s massive throat in what appeared to be a single handed choke hold, a physically impossible feat. His tattoos glowed slightly blue and purple as he slit the dragon’s throat with his axe then he disappeared again. Felix found him at the dragon’s chest where he carved into it with his axe, a red glow covering his arms.

Felix opened his eyes and immediately adjusted to exiting the memory this time. He had gotten used to it and this memory was less visceral and immersive than the others, making it much easier.

The librarian looked at Felix excitedly as he noticed him come to his senses, “That one might be our most popular. ‘The Last Dragon Hunt’ we call it. Though, all of the memories of the warrior are very popular.”

“Are they all battles?”

The librarian scoffed, “I mean… yeah? What else… did you expect from the warrior? Actually, what else did you want?”

Felix put raised his hands in surrender, “No sorry, just curious.”

Grim, any chance you know his name?

Yeah, it’s Rhonan. This one is… not neutral.

Felix nodded mentally as he took another sip out of habit, Also one of the strongest?

Uh… not one of. THE strongest. By a lot… it seems.

Felix shrugged, Huh.

The librarian looked at him a little confused, “That’s all of the memories I retrieved. I can get more if you’d like?”

“No, thank you. That was more than enough.”

The librarian nodded and Felix bid him a quick farewell then exited the library entirely. Grim was still sorting through the information they had scanned so Felix flew back over to Inscripticae so he could start designing his mage armor spell and an enchantment for his cloak.

He walked into the workshop and quickly glancing around, he saw the backs of Fralyna and Edemari’s heads through the window in the design room. He didn’t see anyone else but he assumed Aldahn was in his office, as he tended to be.

Felix chose an unclaimed desk once again and sat down on the stool. He first reviewed all the different shaping nodes he had made for his mage armor spell and tested them in unison. He wanted to make sure all the pieces fit together properly and they didn’t interfere with each-other. Once that was done, he spent some time fiddling with the spell to cast them but then got side tracked over by his ideas for a cloak enchantment.

What he wanted was to utilize all the different sense and measurement nodes he had come across to reactively deploy efficient defenses to any attack he faced. If an arrow flew at him, he wanted it to try and divert it if possible and block it if not. If a spell flew at him, he wanted to counter it’s element or crush it if possible. If all else failed, deploy a mana shield or the localized section of his mage armor spell.

He knew he had all the tools at his disposal to accomplish it, he just had to spend the time to design it. Felix sat on the stool and meditated, fully leveraging his perceptual time dilation as much as he could. He spent more time designing than he normally would and avoided any actual experiments because he wanted to maximize his meditation.

If he ran into a specific wall or something he had to test, he would have ended the meditation but that wasn’t what caused him to stop meditating. Instead, he felt a light tapping on his shoulder that caused him to end his meditation and look over his shoulder.

Standing behind him, he saw the horned, wide eyed and smiling Fralyna.

Felix swiveled in her direction on the stool, “Hey uh… what can I do for you?”

“Any idea how long you’ll be just sitting there doing nothing?”

Felix was completely thrown off, “I’m not… doing nothing. Is this… a problem?”

Fralyna quickly waved her hands back and forth, “No no no, sorry. I know you aren’t, it’s not a problem. Seeing you just gave me an idea… Can you go to the smith’s and pretend you’re waiting on him? You don’t need to stay forever. It’s just that it always seems to light a fire under his ass when I show up, I just don’t have the patience to sit and wait on him.”

“Oh, yeah I can definitely do that.” Suddenly Felix had an idea and continued, “Actually, could you do me a favor in return?”

Fralyna cocked her head and smirked, “Depends on what the favor is.”

“I just want an hour of your time. I have some… questions, that’s all.”

Fralyna’s smile faded a little when she heard the mundane request and she shrugged, “Sure, no problem with that.”

Fralyna handed Felix a small metal disc, slightly bigger than a coin. Apparently the disc was like a dry cleaning ticket and would let him pick up the sword if it was finished. She gave him the name of the shop which was uncreatively just named, Krazol’s Forge.

Felix had plenty of things he wanted to do and most of them could be done in his head or while sitting still so he flew off towards Krazol’s Forge. He darted through a handful of portal spires until he found a large metal looking building with multiple doors that almost looked like vault doors given their thickness. He quickly located the one with signage for the forge he was looking for and headed in.

The inside of the forge was nothing special to Felix. There was a desk in the small lobby area and the forge itself was open to the front. Without taking any steps into it, Felix could see the entirety of the forge right from the front door. The thing that did throw him off a little bit was that it wasn’t particularly hot.

He figured they had some kind of magic ventilation at work but he had no idea how that worked with the spatial enchantments and didn’t actually see any vents himself. He figured it might be a series of portals that were just hidden away but either way, his curiosity was piqued.

He walked up to the empty desk and someone in the shop immediately noticed him. He waited for a few minutes until someone washed their hands and walked over to the desk. He simply wordlessly handed them the metal disc and they did something behind the counter before nodding, returning the disc to Felix then walking back into the forge area.

It took another few minutes before an older looking man with white hair and very roughly cut mutton chops walked over to the desk. As he got closer, Felix’s confidence that he hadn’t chosen his haircut intentionally grew. Though the hair on his cheeks was the longest, the hair around his mouth was at completely different states of growth.

“Y’aren’t Fral.”

Felix knew what Fralyna wanted him to do so he decided to play it up a little and mount the pressure on the smith.

“Nope. I’m shadowing her for this project. She asked me to come and wait for the sword because she figured it should be close to done by now, right?”

“That fug’n… stup’d ’chanters…” The man grumbled, “It ain’t done yet. Y’can wait ov’r there.” He pointed to a number of chairs that were actually in the forge itself.

Considering how annoyed he seemed that Fralyna was obviously pressuring him to work faster, it seemed an odd choice to Felix that the forge was just open to the lobby. Furthermore, the chairs for clients to wait in were in the forge area itself. Though honestly, he was starting to think that this wasn’t Krazol himself and he figured it probably wasn’t his choice to have the forge open.

Felix walked over and took a seat then watched the man walk over to one of the forges, audibly grumbling the entire way over. Felix had some enchantment planning he wanted to work on but was curious enough to watch for a few minutes so he observed.

The man pulled a rough looking sword off a large table to the side and pulled it over to a massive metal slab with weird grooves in it. He placed the sword into one of the grooves so it was held at an angle then secured it with some kind of clay. After that, Felix barely caught his foot moving and activating a pedal then he pulled out a tiny hammer and started tapping at the sword.

Though his mana senses weren’t precise enough at this distance to tell what was happening, Felix could tell mana was moving through the table, clay and sword. That got him interested enough to get to his feet and take a few steps forwards so he could get a better sense. He continued to inch his way closer doing his absolute best to wrestle his curiosity against his inclination to not interfere and bother the smith too much.

Unfortunately, he failed and the smith noticed him. He tried to ignore Felix but after a few minutes of failing to do that, he turned to him, face filled with anger, “I’m workin fast as I can, kid.”

Felix winced, “I know sorry. Just… what is happening here? There isn’t much heat at all as far as I can see.”

His face immediately relaxed, “Y’ain’t ever seen someone cold forge before?”

“I… no.” Felix shook his head and equipped the most innocent expression he could come up with.

The man beckoned Felix over with a quick tilt of his head, “We use ’chantments to soften the metal.”

As he spoke, Felix, now standing directly across the large metal slab from the smith, could actually tell what was happening with all the mana. The clay seemed to just have mana poured into it and from Felix’s perspective, it seemed to be completely hard now as it didn’t shift or move when the sword was hammered.

The enchantments used some of the nodes from the book Felix had memorized back at Inscripticae though some of them were new to him. Felix also noticed that the more the smith spoke, the less annoyed he seemed, the less he grumbled and as he got more excited, obviously passionate about his work, his speech became clearer.

“The ’chantment’s proprietary to’is shop”

Felix didn’t mention that he now had them memorized and decided he would keep that to himself.

“We lower the hardness and ‘lasticity o’ the metal. Then, I can shape it.”

“I promise I’m not trying to rush you, why such a small hammer and such delicate strikes?”

“Ah, the metal. This sword’s made o’ an alloy o’ about a hundred different metals.”

“Really? Fral just mentioned Asakantine, Ruclian and Satrium.”

“Those’re alloys consisting o’bunch o’metals each.”

“Hence, hundreds of different metals?”

“Yup. Takes delicate strikes n’ careful work to keep em all balanced. Else, it’ll crack or ’splode on ye.”

“How does that work?”

“Well, we mix em in a big vat with a lot o’ chemicals. They keep em neutral ’nd unreactive. Use some ’chantments too. We pour em to’a big block then shape it with a hammer like this.”

“Why not a mold?”

“Th’are issues with a mold. More likely to ’splode on ya. The metal also don’t really like the molds. It tends to warp soon as ye remove it. This way, I can be careful to work around the stressors init.”

“I see.”

Felix continued to ask questions about the process while the smith worked which actually seemed to make him work faster and more passionately than before. After a few minutes Felix had satisfied his curiosity but he continued to ask questions just to keep the conversation flowing and the smith working ardently.

At the same time though, because he no longer cared about the conversation itself, he started practicing his spell formations. He continued the same practice he had been doing at the library so he could train his casting speed, range and improve how many spell levels he could cast at once. He made sure to keep all the spell forms as far from the forges as possible because he didn’t want to accidentally interfere with them.

It took a few hours for the smith to finish with their conversation devolving into the specifics of the alloy and alternative alloys for the last two hours. Felix had most of what the smith said memorized but he definitely zoned out when he started listing the hundred some metals in the sword itself along with their ratios.

When the sword was done, the smith quickly polished it then wrapped it in a thick cloth before handing it to Felix. The blade was still slightly dull but apparently that was so that it was easier to work with when they enchanted it. He exchanged the sword for the metal disc and Felix carefully held the sword in his hands.

“Thank you for putting up with my questions, I’m Felix by the way.”

The smith waved him off, “Mogen.”

Felix walked towards the door and just before he walked out, he stowed the sword in his bracelet, having to combine a bunch of pockets to fit it. Luckily, the cross guard was wrapped separately from the blade so it actually fit, were they attached, he wouldn’t have been able to fit it at all.

He flew back over to Inscripticae and continued to practice his spell formations as he flew but dropped them whenever he passed through the portal spires, just in case.

He was actually surprised to find Edemari and Fralyna still sitting in the design room so he pulled the sword out and carried it up the stairs to them.

“Wow that was faster than I expected. You must’ve really annoyed the hell out of Mogen.” Fralyna smirked as she took the blade from him and placed it on the table.

Felix shrugged, “Guess so.”

Fralyna unwrapped the blade and nodded while she inspected it. She backed up and looked to Edemari, “Mari.” Fralyna gestured to the blade.

Edemari walked up to it and gripped it by the tang. The sword was a little too big for her by Felix’s judgement but she backed up to get some room and swung it around with ease. She nodded then walked over to the stairs and hopped off the side into the workshop. She swung around a little more aggressively in the extra space then walked over to the big table off in the corner.

Surprising Felix, she whacked the sword against the table from every angle making a cacophonous racket echo through the shop. After a hundred strikes or so she nodded and hopped back up the entire stair case then placed the sword back down on the table in the design room.

Edemari shrugged, “Great-swords aren’t really my thing and there’s no handle but, it seems top notch.”

“Perfect. Considering how much it cost?” Fralyna crossed her arms.

“I mean, I wouldn’t pay that much.” Edemari smirked, “Seems good though. Client should like it.”

“How much was it?” Felix asked.

“25 B.” Fralyna said matter of factly.

Holy shit.

“Wait, how much is the final product gonna cost, after enchanting and all that?” Felix looked between the two of them.

“Probably… A few thousand B?” Fralyna shrugged looking at Edemari.

Edemari just shrugged and nodded, seemingly in agreement.

Definitely not as rich as I thought I was after the tutorial.

Fralyna pivoted and turned to Felix, “So, you said you had questions?”

“Right.”

Felix had thought about it for a little while and had ultimately decided to tell Fralyna and eventually, the others in the shop, that he was integrated. Ultimately, he could read all the books he wanted but he needed actual perspectives from people and questioning random people would bring more attention than he wanted. Whenever he vaguely hinted at not knowing the gods or something basic, people looked at him like he was a pariah.

The enchanters in the shop seemed to be the most trustworthy people he had on hand and this would help them know what to expect of him. It would also give him easy access to people he could pose simple questions to in the future. He had thought about tracking down Thezan and the Shade’s Wrath but ultimately, this was easier in the long run.

“So… I’m an integrated esca- exile I guess.” Felix said as he flashed the title to prove his point.

“Huh. Actually… that explains a lot.” Fralyna said as she sat down on one of the chairs at the table.

“I told you there was something weird about this kid.” Edemari said in a very I-told-you-so way to Fralyna.

Fralyna just waved her off and looked at Felix, “That explains you asking me my race… So you were you all humans then?”

“Yeah. At least, my planet was. There could be more planets in an integration right?”

Edemari took a seat as well, “Wow you really did get out early if it hadn’t introduced you to other planets then.”

Felix kept standing, “How many are there usually?”

Edemari leaned back in her seat, “A dozen or so populated planets I think… usually. They all get integrated then slowly introduced to each-other and the resource planets The System created.”

Felix looked at both of them, “What are those?”

Edemari smirked a little, “Woah, you got out really early then, damn. Just planets with no people on them. System grows them just to grow resources and whatnot. Let’s you use them, pick em clean and so on. Some are saved and distributed throughout the multiverse. Some of the resources are just farmed and distributed. Some are turned into dungeons or events.”

Felix nodded, “I see. Is this all just common knowledge then?”

Fralyna shook her head, “We’ve been researching the integration because we knew it was coming up. All of this is from a our research at the library.”

Edemari leaned forwards a little, “You said you had specific questions?”

“Yeah. I read some books at the library but… I want to know how people actually think. Gods?”

Fralyna looked at him with a frown, “Like, what are they, who are they, what can or do they do?”

Felix smiled a little guiltily, “Yes.”

Edemari chuckled, “Integrated, right.”

Fralyna’s eyes shot upwards as she thought, “Well as for who, there’s obviously Cal. You’ve heard of Cal, right?”

Felix shook his head and shrugged.

Fralyna looked at him with wide eyes, “Damn. Vo Rhonan Callahan. The Warrior. The Original God. The Last Primordial.”

Edemari leaned back again and placed her hands behind her head then added, “Slayer and Protector of the Dragons. Head of the Archons. And by far… the strongest god.”

“I did actually watch a memory of Rhonan fighting a Dragon on a mountain. Didn’t realize he… Cal?”

Edemari grinned, “Yeah, long story but basically, a while back a memory crystal leaked where a different god or demigod close to him called him Cal.”

“People being people, picked up the nickname and now it’s pretty common to just call him Cal.” Fralyna shrugged.

Edemari lifted her feet into the air and balanced her chair on it’s back two legs, “Keep in mind this was a long ass time ago.”

“Did you watch any of his other battles?” Fralyna leaned forwards a little.

“My favorite is the Primordial.” Edemari lowered her hands to her stomach but the chair remained perfectly balanced.

Fralyna’s eyes brightened, “I like the Chimera from the early days. Easier to follow.”

“I didn’t watch any other memories of him. I watched one of the Holy Mother then one of Edras. What’s a primordial?”

Fralyna shrugged, “Creatures from before The System. Calling Cal ‘The Last Primordial’ doesn’t actually make any sense but…”

Edemari continued, “The primordials are much stronger than the gods, except Cal.”

Fralyna added, “He’s the only being born after The System that’s ever even been close to their level.”

Edemari tilted her head back, “Only one to actually ever fight and kill one.”

Felix frowned, “Who are they?”

Fralyna cocked her head, “The primordials? Some are creatures others are people but no one really knows what they are. Except the one Cal killed, that one we know. It was a massive three headed ape like thing.”

Edemari added in matter of factly, “People have good guesses but they aren’t exactly public figures. Not the way gods are. They don’t need to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well just the way gods work… Right, integrated…” Edemari nodded, “Basically worshipping a god means you’re choosing your afterlife.”

“Wait… what?”

Edemari continued, “Yeah you said you saw memories of The Holy Mother and Edras right? Them, as well as Cal, each have their own afterlife. Cal’s is called Valhalla. The Holy Mother’s is The Garden. Edras’ is The Academy.”

Valhalla… as in…

Grim shrugged, I guess.

Felix looked at them, his confusion painted all over his face, “How does that work? You just pray to them and then when you die…”

Fralyna shook her head, “No, nothing like that. To worship a god means you are binding your soul to theirs in a contract of sorts. When you die, your soul goes to their afterlife. It’s a permanent decision.”

Edemari shrugged, “You don’t have to choose one and it’s not that big a deal who you choose. Edras and Cal have been on opposite sides for a while but it’s not like their worshippers will fight each-other or anything. Almost no one is that invested.”

“What do you mean opposite sides?”

Fralyna explained, “Mari mentioned the Archons before right? Basically they’re just an alliance of gods that share a set of laws and rules. Together they oversee the largest section of the multiverse compared to any other gods or alliances. Edras is the leader of the second largest alliance.”

Felix frowned, “How many in each?”

Fralyna looked to Edemari for help, “Uh… 50 something Archons vs 30 ish or something like that?”

Edemari just shrugged and nodded.

“Are there other alliances?”

Fralyna shrugged and made an expression that clearly indicated they didn’t matter much, “A handful but they only have a few gods in them and they’re mostly about proximity not some ideals or mission. Most of the other gods are just neutral. Not part of either of the big ones.”

“What are the ideals?”

Edemari sighed, “The archons are pretty loose just general stuff. They don’t worry about it, don’t really enforce much of anything. Edras’ faction wants to end the whole ‘factions hoarding information thing.’ He wants everything to be more open or something like that. Honestly, I don’t really know.”

Felix was curious about that and wanted to ask more on it but they both seemed so uninterested that he decided he would just ask Grim about the books and ask The Guild of Answers if necessary.

“So… you said fashion follows the strongest gods? If Cal is the strongest and has been for a while… fashion must be pretty boring, no?”

“Yes, very much so… One sec.” Edemari popped out of her chair, vaulting over the back rest while still balancing it on it’s back two legs before she lowered it to the ground and disappeared from the room.

She returned a few minutes later with a very shiny and very confused Drakene in tow.

Edemari gestured towards Felix, “He was asking how fashion changes if Cal is the strongest and has been forever.”

Krinitor’s face went from confused to excited in an instant, “Ah well, that’s a reasonable question. You see it is definitely desirable to imitate The Great Warrior himself. Over time though, he hasn’t changed his look much so, the more fashion inclined have deviated. Rhonan’s look is definitely a classic but most people like to wear shirts and not everyone is into pelts or bare feet so… We adapted.”

Krinitor walked forward and pulled a massive square sketch book out of nowhere and dropped it on the table then flipped through to a specific page. He pointed at a drawing of what appeared to be a rather burly and buff elf wearing clean clothes that resembled a suit with less buttons and more leather straps. Over all of it though, he wore a long animal pelt as a cloak.

The drawing itself was spectacular in Felix’s opinion. It was obvious it wasn’t a picture but it was very close to photorealistic. The depth and detail, especially in the fur and layers of cloth, made it look incredibly realistic. It was also fully colored, which was completely unexpected for Felix in a sketchbook and helped a lot.

Krinitor was obviously incredibly passionate about fashion, “See this outfit uses leather straps and a pelt cloak to pay homage but this is a little obvious. There are more subtle ways too.”

Felix leaned in closer to examine the details, “Krinitor, this drawing is amazing.”

“Oh, thank you.”

Felix turned his head to look up at Krinitor, “What do you mean more subtle? And do all fashionable outfits pay homage to The Warrior?”

“Most of them do. He may not be the focus but… he’s very popular for a good reason.”

Krinitor flipped through a few other outfits in his sketchbook. Some of them paid homage solely through their use of leather, which was a natural material, something Rhonan seemed to prefer. Others were more obvious such as cloaks with axe prints covering them or even some outfits that reminded Felix of graphic tee shirts.

Krinitor grew increasingly excited as he flipped through his sketchbook and eventually built up the courage to show Felix a recent sketch. Felix immediately recognized the person in the sketch, which wasn’t a difficult task given Krinitor’s drawing skill, “That’s me.”

“Yes. I uh… it’s a hobby of mine to design outfits for people. Try to accentuate their specific features while taking into account their day to day lives and so on.”

There were a few simple sketches that were clearly unfinished of Felix in various outfits but Krinitor pointed to the only one that was fully colored and shaded. The sketch had Felix wearing a simple black robe that lay open in the front with a high black collar that framed his neck and head. Beneath the robe, there was a deep blue shirt with long sleeves that grew tighter around the wrists. It cascaded down the body and gave the outfit color where it peeked through the robe and cloak above. The robe hung loosely near the bottom and hung almost to his knees.

On top of the entire thing, was not quite a cloak. In Felix’s mind, a cloak didn’t have sleeves, this looked more like a large white coat. It was completely white and the sleeves hung loosely around his wrists but were cut shorter than the robe beneath.

The cloak or coat hung a little further than the robe, reaching right above his ankles, just high enough that it would never get caught or be in the way. The black robe was only visible where it peaked out beneath the cloak above it and it served to outline the outfit around it. The pants also matched the robes and were a similar black style with a looser fit that disappeared into the tops of two brown leather boots.

Imprinted onto the cloak, in a color that perfectly matched the blue of the shirt, was a series of what looked almost like spells and enchantments were they not so angular. The entire outfit was made to go together. The colors complimented each-other, the necklines cascaded into each-other and each sleeve layered on top of each-other. It had depth and texture and, though Felix had no real fashion experience before or after the integration, it looked good to him.

Krinitor traced his finger along the outfit as he spoke, “This is a bit more of a formal style and the homage to The Warrior is simply in the pattern of the cloak.”

Felix nodded along, it was subtle but evident now that he knew what to look for, “To match his tattoos?”

Krinitor nodded, “Exactly.”

Fralyna and Edemari grew curious at this point so they stood and walked over, peering into the sketch book.

Fralyna saw the sketch and scoffed incredulously, “What the hell is that?”

Felix looked at her with confusion and she rolled her eyes, “Show him the one you did for me.”

Krinitor averted his gaze, “It’s uh… in my other… sketchbook.”

Fralyna just shook her head, “You have it on you, I know you do.”

Krinitor grumbled a little then pulled another sketchbook out of nowhere and placed it on the table. He flipped through to a page with a perfectly recognizable drawing of Fralyna. In the drawing she wore a completely ridiculous, in Felix’s opinion, white dress. It was evidently paying homage to The Holy Mother but it was extravagant with fabric everywhere, like a wedding dress had exploded onto her.

Krinitor immediately jumped to it’s defense before Felix said anything, “It was the fashion at the time. Now the style is more… subtle” He pushed the book aside and pointed back at the drawing of Felix, “like this. Also” He looked to Fralyna but failed to meet her gaze, “you don’t really fight anymore so…”

Edemari immediately jumped on that, “I do. I still fight, so why does mine look just as absurd huh?”

Krinitor shrunk a little, “Yours was more functional.”

Edemari guffawed, “Show him.” She gestured towards Felix with her head.

Krinitor flipped a few pages into the book and pointed at Edemari in an equally ridiculous outfit. Hers had pants and a shirt but it also had spikes that curved out of her hips, elbows, shoulders and knees. Felix wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be armor or clothing.

Krinitor scrambled, “See this would be much easier to move in and can’t you see the layering? A-And the materials I noted here? It’s clearly more functional…”

Edemari rolled her eyes, “Super functional, it also costs more creds then I think I’ve ever personally owned at once.”

Felix looked incredulously at Krinitor, “How much?”

He looked up from his sulking a bit, “For hers?”

“Or mine.” Felix shrugged.

Krinitor sighed as his head dropped a little, “A few 100,000 B or so…”

Felix frowned a little, “What would it be made of? Are they just clothes or do they offer any defensive function?”

Krinitor’s expression brightened a little, “I would only choose the highest quality materials. The price I gave is for materials and labor I cannot do. My design work and labor is free of charge. This would use peak defensive cloth for C grade because we have to plan for the future of course. You’re an enchanter so I would choose cloth that is receptive to enchantments and regenerates with mana, exactly the same as Kraken’s leather..”

Felix thought about it for a few moments, “How long to make it?”

Krinitor’s shoulders fell a little, “It would probably take… maybe… about… half an epoch?”

After having talked with Thezan, Felix already knew how much he was going to be paid for the last job and he was pretty sure he could afford it. What he didn’t know was how much tuition would be at Eramith. He had a scholarship but he didn’t know if that was the kind of scholarship that paid for everything every epoch or if it was the kind that paid for part of it.

Felix looked to Krinitor, “Well it sounds great, unfortunately I’m not sure I can afford it right now. I’ll get back to you though.”

Krinitor nodded, “Of course. I appreciate the interest nonetheless.”

Krinitor smiled but didn’t look hopeful. He nodded to all of them then dejectedly walked out of the room and disappeared. Felix turned back to the two women and they were both looking at him incredulously, neither of them even remotely believing he could afford it at all.

He ignored their expressions and barreled through to something else he had been wondering about, “Soul spaces?”

Fralyna chuckled a little, “Don’t worry about that until around the A grade. You need a certain amount of soul strength. You can start working towards it and get there early but don’t worry about it too much now, that kind of training will just be a waste of time.”

Edemari nodded, “You already have a spatial storage item, right?”

Felix nodded, “Yes. The opening is a little… small.”

Fralyna just shook her head, “Just buy something cheap then. Not too cheap, but yeah.”

Felix asked them a handful of more mundane questions and they questioned him for a bit about the integration and what it was like. After that he and Fralyna walked down to the shop and brought the sword with them. She already had the enchantment all laid out and she had Felix review it with her a final time.

They adjusted it to fit the sword better, now that they had the exact dimensions and shape in front of them then, Fralyna prepped the sword by cleaning it with a special chemical bath. She chose a specific quill from the drawer and began drawing out the enchantment. The quill didn’t seem to actually be engraving the enchantment like Felix thought though, rather it looked like she was drawing it out with a pencil.

It turned out, he was mostly right. Once she was done they scrutinized the enchantment and even had Krinitor, who they found in a meeting room, and Edemari look it over. Once everyone approved, she went ahead and traced it out with a different quill. This one only made a very slight scratch in the metal itself. Once she completely finished with that, she used a different quill that followed the scratch she had previously made and engraved even deeper into the blade.

They took a break after that as they had spent almost three days straight working on the enchantments and Fralyna said she desperately needed to sleep. She claimed the nap room for herself and Felix briefly checked in on Nova who had happily gotten their way through a quarter of the Demitium chunk.

Felix knew he had an order he still had to pickup from Zufaris at Bloodstone Alchemy but it was the middle of the night. He could have gone in the morning but he didn’t want to miss or skip out on any of the enchantment process. Realistically, the order would wait for him. There was no rush.

Felix thought about working on his Mage Armor spell or his Cloak enchantment but decided against that. Instead, he sat down on the stool behind the table that held the sword and began meditating. He entered his Soul Garden and began running his endless treadmill that was a makeshift rendition of Mihto’s obstacle course. He found it much easier within his own soul space to observe himself, so to speak, and pay attention to his own mistakes, which was a huge boon.

He spent an hour of Soul Garden time doing that then moved onto something else. He took a quick peek at the books he had stored in his soul space and was disappointed. The information in the books had started to warp a little bit. It reminded him of trying to read a book within a dream. The words weren’t really there and they didn’t really make sense but at the same time, it was all recognizable to a certain degree.

He knew Grim was still sorting through the books he had scanned on mental enhancements but it was still disappointing to see the issues with this particular avenue. Either way, he fully planned on suffusing his entire body with a new layer of his soul, both to fight poisons and because the more he thought about it, the more it felt like a good idea.

Before doing anything with his own soul and body, Felix had the perfect testing ground on his fingers so he started with his Persona. He shifted his consciousness over to the soul ring and started creating a new layer on its soul. He fashioned the layer from the leftovers of souls that he had let drift around in the ring.

Some of those scraps had been absorbed by the ring but only a miniscule amount. There were still scraps of anima grouped together that had faint intentions left in them. For this layer he wanted the soul to be as much his soul as he could make it. For his real soul, he figured he would likely use a combination of his soul’s second layer and the ambient mana that followed him around and acted as a third layer.

For this, he didn’t worry about it as much as he would with his own soul, but he still spent some time affinizing the soul matter to himself. What he ended up doing was taking the leftover pieces of random creature’s souls and pulling them into his soul space. As expected, they were instantly obliterated and all that was left was what felt like empty anima that was lightly affinized to him. He pulled in all the scraps he could find then compressed them within his soul space.

He fashioned a dense chunk of anima that was very amenable to his soul but not necessarily part of his soul. For this experiment, he decided that was likely enough. Felix pushed the soul matter back out into the ring and fused it just outside the second layer of his Persona’s soul. Now, between the second layer that held stats and controlled his body and the fourth layer that was the defensive layer he had crafted earlier, there was a new layer.

The new third layer was ridiculously thin and wouldn’t nearly be enough to suffuse the entirety of his Persona’s body, not even close. It was a good start though and Felix was happy with the progress. To go any further, he knew he was going to have to find a whole lot of enemies to kill.

In fact, going out and killing swathes of enemies had the potential to solve a few of his other problems too. It was looking increasingly likely that he was going to have to take a vacation to go grind out some monsters in the near future.

Before he did that though, he definitely wanted to finish up with his new defensive and maybe even some new offensive spells. Felix returned his consciousness to his body and looked around at the empty workshop around him. He checked the time and saw it was early morning then asked Aldahn who said Fralyna was still fast asleep. By his estimate, she would sleep for a few more hours at least so Felix headed out.

The first place he headed was Bloodstone Alchemy. Unfortunately, the shop wasn’t open so he turned right around and headed straight for the Valtrusiar school. Mihto was in fact awake and there were no other customers in the shop. Felix paid him for a couple hours of tutelage and had Mihto give him further adjustments to his movement. He had a dozen adjustments for Felix to make which would keep him occupied in his Soul Garden for at least another dekad or so.

Once the two hours he had paid for were up, Felix headed to a nearby private bath and bathed then flew off back to Bloodstone Alchemy. This time, it was open, so Felix walked in and greeted Zufaris, the multicolored Drakene.

“Ah, you are here to pickup your order, yesss?”

“I am.”

“Exsssellent. I added in a few extra goodiesss free of charge.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” Felix smiled and accepted the transfer when the transaction screen appeared before him. Zufaris handed him a large crate that was packed expertly with cloth between each of the various sized bottles and vials. Felix pulled a few out and saw that they were in fact, labeled. He thanked the alchemist again and walked out of the shop. He dropped the container into his soul space right as he walked out the door then flew off back to Inscripticae.

There, he sat down at the same desk and waited for Fralyna to wake up. As he waited, he started downing the various poisons Zufaris had given him in a random order. Some were weirdly acidic others were necrotic, some were biological and bacteria based others were smart spores and some, were just plain colored water.

The first poison Felix came across that threw him off was supposed to be a C grade poison. The vial looked like any other with a weird green mixture inside it but upon drinking it, Felix found it was entirely tasteless and to him, undetectable if it were slipped into something. Going through his normal routine, Felix paid careful attention to what the poison did and found that it did, absolutely nothing.

He was annoyed that Zufaris had scammed him at first until he saw his health rapidly declining. He looked through his entire body and the only thing that was wrong with it was that it was slowly giving up. The poison itself though, hadn’t done anything. Felix meditated to counter his declining health but all he managed to do was slow it down so he reluctantly took a sip of the C grade health potion Thezan had given him.

Luckily, splitting it worked fine and he gained a small burst of health. He continued to watch the poison and look over his body, now examining the potion as much as the poison. Neither of them seemed to do anything. They didn’t even leave his stomach and yet their effects took hold in an instant.

Fucking… System… fuckery.

Felix realized what was happening and just sat in silence, sipping at his health potion while the poison wore off. He practiced his spell formation off to the side but it didn’t distract him from how annoyed he was. Once it had worn off, Felix resumed his consumption of poisons and luckily, didn’t find a single other System Fuckery poison over the next couple hours.

Fralyna had woken up just an hour into Felix’s poison buffet but waved him off as she left the shop to bathe and eat. Felix shrugged and continued downing poisons until she came back looking refreshed with renewed motivation.

They went back to enchanting the sword together and managed to finish the removal of material stage. All in all, they hadn’t removed that much material and the grooves themselves were small once Felix backed up. Fralyna walked to a corner of the shop and pulled over the vat on rails. She filled it with the appropriate inlay, swapped out the tip then handed Felix the quill.

She let Felix do some of it because all they had to do to fix any mistake here was heat the blade. The melting point of the inlay was much lower than the blade itself. Once they finished with that, switching out every few hours at Fralyna’s direction, they reviewed the entire thing. She then retrieved a handle and cross guard which they enchanted and test fit onto the blade itself.

Before they coated everything and essentially sealed it in, Fralyna told him they had to test the entire thing as a whole. Actually use the enchantment. She pulled out the soul gem and mana battery that they fitted into the sword then brought it over to the corner of the workshop. Felix helped her push aside some desks to make a big empty space where she powered up the enchantment and slowly swung the blade a few times.

Then, she activated the replay function which was on a delay of a second and backed up. The blade remained floating in the air where she had left it and after a second, it perfectly traced out the movements she had made.

Felix just looked at it with a completely dumbfounded expression. She walked back over and gave it a much longer sequence of commands and watched it completely analytically. Felix was both amazed at the enchantment itself and the fact that it had just worked on their first try. Fralyna was much less impressed but she was thoroughly entertained by Felix’s reaction nonetheless.

After the initial testing phase Fralyna seemed overall happy with the enchantments so she brought the assembled sword over to Aldahn who started affinizing the entire blade. She went off to eat and invited Felix to join her but he decided he wanted to watch Aldahn, which he luckily didn’t seem to mind at all.

Felix watched Aldahn grab the soul gem pommel with one hand and the blade with the other and questioned him, “What does affinizing the blade entail?”

Aldahn didn’t even look up from the sword, “Well affinizing-”

Felix interrupted him, “Sorry, I know what that is and it looks like what I had to do with Starmetal. Is it similar at all?”

Aldahn nodded and tilted his head back and forth slightly, “Yes. Sort of. Instead of using your own soul, the goal here is to have the soul gem bind itself to the entire blade. Instead of being a soul gem glued to the end of a sword, it becomes a sword with a soul that happens to mostly be located in the pommel.”

Felix nodded in understanding despite Aldahn being entirely focused on the sword, “So you push the soul out of the soul gem and cycle it through the entire blade?”

“Yeah, basically. It’s a lot more delicate than Starmetal affinization otherwise I’d let you try it. It also requires a decent amount of soul strength and precision. Unfortunately, if I let you try and you… screwed it up, you could actually damage the soul gem and the blade.”

Felix frowned, “How would that damage the blade?”

“The blade gets affinized to the soul gem, soul gem breaks, now you have a blade affinized to a soul that doesn’t really exist anymore… sort of. Parts of this soul will exist in other soul gems so…”

Felix sighed as he understood the concern, “It will remained affinized and unusable until it eventually wears down and resets itself.”

Aldahn smiled, “Exactly.”

“So why couldn’t Fralyna do this?”

“I’m the only one in the shop at the moment with the soul strength and soul manipulation experience to properly do this. Luckily we don’t work with soul gems too often so, it’s not a big deal.”

“Not sure if this is an inappropriate question… what level are you compared to all of them? I can’t actually identify any of you?”

Aldahn nodded upwards towards where the identification usually appeared and Felix identified him.

[B] Aldahn (Lvl 2731)

Aldahn reset his identification settings once he had confirmed Felix had seen it, “The others are mostly low to mid C grade. You can ask them if you want more specifics.”

“Thanks.”

After a few moments of silence, Felix had a thought, “You don’t often work with soul gems but I take it using souls in enchantments is… higher tier in general?”

Aldahn shrugged slightly, “For the most part.”

“What’s the peak of enchanting then?”

Aldahn actually looked up from the sword and his eyes darted upwards as he thought about the question, “Traditional enchanting or…?”

Felix frowned, “Non traditional enchanting? What is… What does that mean?”

Aldahn sighed, “I guess you could call this non traditional enchanting? I wouldn’t though. More like enchanting where there is no mana circuitry or nodes at all, just a soul. Pretty much any sentient weapon, though… I guess those could have mana circuitry… whatever. As for the peak of… everything? Those would be Primordial echoes, which ironically are very simple to make.” Aldahn smirked, “All you have to do is craft something from SSS or Divine grade materials, at minimum, then embed a significant piece of a primordial’s soul into it, at least in theory.”

Felix shook his head as he tried to parse what Aldahn had just said, “Wait… what?”

“Not easy, but simple.”

“Sorry, I got that… How many of those exist?”

“Unknown. We, the collective society we, know of a few of them but there are definitely more than just those. I know there’s a sword that people often call, the original sword but it’s almost definitely not that, just logically. There’s also a bow and an axe but I don’t know much about those.”

“Where are they or who… wields them? Is Cal’s axe a primordial echo? Are they all weapons?”

Aldahn shrugged again, “No one really knows. A good guess is that Rhonan has a few stashed away in a vault somewhere. Likely a number of them are held by the living primordials. Rhonan’s axe is not an echo though. Long story but we can be pretty sure of that.”

Felix nodded, “So that’s using souls and all that. What’s the peak of traditional enchanting then?”

“I believe…” Aldahn squinted and looked towards Felix’s midsection, “You have one on your wrist.”

Felix lifted his arm, “You can identify things I have equipped?”

Aldahn chuckled, “Nope. He has a particular style.”

“Kryptos?”

“Yeah. One of the primordials we know about.”

“Why didn’t Edemari or Fralyna mention them when I asked about primordials?”

“People tend to forget about them. No one has ever really seen them. We just get a whole bunch of enchanted items with their name strapped to them.”

“A whole bunch as in how many? How rare… or valuable is my bracelet? Should I hide it?”

Aldahn shook his head, “Nah. It’d be worth a fair bit but I’d guess it wouldn’t be too hard to replace. There are a lot of Kryptos items. Not in that you’ll see them that often just that it’s way more than you’d expect. Issue is, they aren’t usually that useful.”

“What do you mean?”

Aldahn nodded towards Felix’s wrist, “Let me take a guess here, your bracelet is a spatial storage item?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you get stuff in and out of it?”

Felix looked down at the bracelet, “I… align the bands to a specific pocket then reach through the bracelet.”

“Right so it’s super cool and incredibly complicated. An engineering and enchantment marvel. But, the opening is only as big as the bracelet and you have to align a bunch of symbols to get at anything? Not exactly fast access, is it?”

“I guess not. It’s kind of huge though, in total.”

Aldahn shrugged, “Fair enough. Compare that to a relatively cheap spatial storage bag you can get where the opening is much bigger and it can be enchanted to have pockets and be organized. You can get more expensive ones too where you reach in and think about the thing you want and it appears in your hand.”

“So basically it’s not gonna get me mugged?”

Aldahn looked up and contorted his face in confusion, “Mugged?”

“Robbed in the street?”

Aldahn thought about it for a second then shook his head, “Not sure that’s really a thing. Well, not in the city anyways. Out in the wilds maybe… No, not likely. Kryptos items are common enough that it’s not a huge deal. At least, not from anyone you can’t deal with yourself. They are really cool though, aren’t they? From an enchantment perspective?”

“Yeah, I didn’t realize this used actual mana channels though, are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure. Most of Kyrptos’ stuff does. Issue is it’s so complicated they are often impossible to examine or dissect even if they are. You could pull out a node but the way Kryptos uses them together, you’d never get much use out of them.”

“Good to know. Something to aspire to I guess.”

Aldahn snorted, “Sure kid.”

“Little off topic but… any recommendations for skills I should add to my profession? I’ve been sitting on a lot of empty slots for a while now.”

Aldahn raised an eyebrow but his eyes were still locked onto the blade in his hands, “How long?”

“I only got the two skills I have now close to the end of the E grade. Otherwise nothing.”

Aldahn cocked his head, “What was your profession before Enchanter?”

“Well, it’s not exactly enchanter now either. It just includes enchanting as part of it. Same thing in the E grade, I took the direct evolution from my E grade profession.”

Aldahn shook his head quickly, “Wait, hold up. You had an enchanting profession in the E grade?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Aldahn nodded with wide eyes, “It’s very… rare to get an enchanting profession in the E grade without being an apprentice or having direct tutelage.”

“Why?”

“Requirements are too high. You’re messing with nodes, mana, channels putting them all together. Just the knowledge base alone is very high. Some people get them when they stumble upon textbooks or something of the like but even then they have to show an affinity for it.”

“That makes sense then. I was screwing around with my spells a lot at the start of E grade.”

Aldahn looked at him like he was a monster, “What?”

“Just small stuff like making my Fire Bolt’s bigger and shoot faster mostly. Then make them channeled… Nothing nearly as complicated as the enchanting we do here.”

“Huh. Well, I guess I now know why you were kicked out then.”

Felix winced, “Is that, that… odd?”

“Yes. It’s one, dangerous but also, time consuming. You have to reprepare each spell every time you tinker with it.”

“Prepare?”

“Like, learn it? Slot it into your spell list.”

Oh…

Felix just shrugged, unsure what to say about that.

Aldahn sighed, “Anyways, yeah it’s weird. Skills… I guess that depends, do you care about the peak or not?”

Felix immediately recognized that he was referring to their last conversation about skills, “I care about the peak.”

Aldahn shrugged a little making it seem to Felix like he didn’t think that was the right call, but he didn’t mention it, “In that case… hm… It’s difficult with enchanting because there aren’t many skills that work that way, the best ones are probably Enchantment Simulation. It lets you simulate an enchantment before actually inscribing it so you know what it does, great for testing and not really something you can do yourself.”

Yes it is, I can.

“You could take Enchantment Identification. It lets you identify an enchantment if you fully map it out. It’s mostly a convenience spell but it can be handy because identifying enchantments is kind of tedious.”

But if I can simulate it already… what’s the point?

“Mana Source can power enchantments using ambient mana outside of combat.”

I can also, already, do that.

“You could pick up a variant of Enchantment Compatibility that will tell you how much two enchantments will interfere with each-other. Super useful if you plan on equipping a bunch of enchantments.”

Not a terrible idea but I don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to do something similar myself.

Aldahn looked at Felix to gauge his reaction to the options he had already presented then continued, “Could grab Affinized Enchantments though, that one is quite a bit rarer so you’d need a high rarity profession. It basically binds you to all the enchantments you make and the ones you wear, given enough time. It embeds a small amount of anima in the enchanted piece and affinizes it to you. It’s nothing like a bond, not nearly that strong or versatile but it’ll let you sense and manipulate them a little bit. Before you say that you could eventually do this too, the advantage to the skill is that it doesn’t actually take a piece of your soul so you don’t have to regenerate it.”

Meh. I could do this right? How long does regeneration take?

Depends. Took you a few months to regenerate from my and Nova’s soul bonds. You’re a little faster than normal but not much. You wouldn’t even need to though, from what he’s saying, you could probably just affinize ambient anima and it would be the same. Just like you did with that new layer on the Persona’s soul.

Damn. At this point, I would consider swapping out my profession if it weren’t for the fact that it levels so easily based on things I already do.

Yeah and the stats are kinda sweet.

Yup.

At this point it was obvious Aldahn was racking his brain, “The only other thing I can think of is identification skills. Identify Material Properties, Identify Arcane Material Properties, Identify Enchantment Node. Eventually you’ll know the materials well enough that you don’t need them but they won’t really have a limit in the same way Strong Enchantments or Durable Enchantments will. You said your profession includes other fields right? Maybe focus on those.”

“Those are just percent increases?”

Aldahn sighed, “Yeah. It’s hard for enchanters because a lot of the skills are some percent stronger, more durable, more efficient enchantments. Obviously those are System based though…”

“Yeah, System Fuckery?”

“Yeah sure, that.”

“I ended up grabbing Tongues and Crafter’s Intuition, thoughts on those?”

He shrugged again, “Not bad. Tongues is good if you ever need to read or understand speech but it depends on it’s rarity. It’s also one of those things that’s essential in a couple very specific situations and useless outside of that. Crafter’s Intuition won’t show you anything you wouldn’t have already caught given time, it’s just a little faster is all. Is that how you found the flaws during the interview?”

“Actually… no. I just… mapped the enchantment and knew.”

“Yeah so, up to you if that’s useful. I tried it for a bit but found it ended up being slower than I was once I had enough experience. It also isn’t creative, where you might make a connection between two mostly unrelated things, it won’t. It will only show you flaws you’ve seen and identified before.”

“To be honest… I forgot I even had that skill.”

Aldahn chuckled, “Yeah, that happens. It’s not activatable but it is at the same time. You need to kind of focus on using it or rather… on finding flaws and stressors specifically. It’s definitely not a bad skill and is not one with a cap like Defensive Enchantments and Lethal Enchantments.”

Felix sighed, “More System Fuckery?”

“Yup.”

“If I didn’t have tongues, how would I identify a language I don’t know?”

Aldahn shrugged, “Books. If it’s spoken you’d have to memorize enough of it that you could either speak and recreate it perfectly or create a memory crystal and bring it to the library.”

“I see. Thanks for your help.”

Aldahn nodded, “Sur- OH! Pickup Quill Precision or something like it if you have something better in your profession.”

Felix cocked a brow, “Does it do anything more than I think it does?”

“The big advantage is that it will essentially double or triple your dexterity when holding a quill or when enchanting. It lets you enchant beyond your body, if your mind can keep up.”

“As in, if I can design or think of an enchantment that is very detailed but my body wouldn’t normally be able to execute?”

“Yes exactly but also, assuming your brain is capable of controlling a body at that level of precision. Eventually your body will catch up but being and enchanter and… caster, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Your mind will often move faster than your body can. This helps you bridge that gap, at least for enchanting.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course.”

Felix sat down and sorted through his skills while Aldahn finished affinizing the sword. He quickly looked through his available skills and found the ones Aldahn had mentioned that he was interested in. He picked up Identify Material Properties (Rare) and Identify Arcane Material Properties (Uncommon).

The former let him know the properties of a sword, shield, armor or robe then he could adjust for that. It would tell him how elastic and hard a material was so he knew how to enchant it properly. The latter did something similar for inlay materials. It would work on any material, just like the former would, but it gave him different stats like mana conductivity, along with graphs for how it would react to mana. This would let him know how thick an inlay should be before it heated itself up and exploded, for example.

He also grabbed Quill Precision (Rare) which didn’t actually specify how much it increased his dexterity, just that it helped him follow either a mental image or traced enchantment, more accurately. He looked for Identify Enchantment Node, the skill he was most excited for but found something else instead.

Profession: [Identify Arcane Component (Arcane) This skill allows the user to identify any spell, enchantment, ritual or ward component. The provided information includes efficiency curves, power, attunements, input and output requirements along with feedback and interference generated.]

As soon as he saw it though, he realized he didn’t need it at all. He had trouble in the past, specifically on the contract with Shade’s Wrath, identifying nodes. Once he read the skill though, he realized he should be able to create a spell form that would map all this out for him. Using his Memory Palace, he could then graph out efficiency curves himself. Given that was the case, that made this the perfect skill because all he would be relying on The System for, was automation.

In future, he could then improve upon the identification process and theoretically, the skill would slowly improve. He dropped Crafter’s Intuition and accepted the skill then sifted through the rest of the list.

The last skill he picked up was Identify Material Flaws (Special). This skill would allow him to examine an item and find it’s flaws, such as the ones he looked for in gems when he was making batteries. It would also allow him to avoid or work around any flaws in metal and cloth for armor or weapons. It was also something he could do with his Soul Space, but this would be faster and automated for him. He had to drop tongues for it but he was happy to do so given his perfect memory and it’s relatively low rarity.

All the skills started at [Novice I] though he suspected his proficiency with Identify Arcane Component would increase as soon as he used it. He doubted he was considered a Novice at that at all, considering how difficult it would actually be for anyone else to do it.

He also perused the Class and General skills as he was looking to drop Dragon’s Dance as a skill and had an empty General skill slot. He didn’t find anything for his class that really stood out to him though. In the general skills, there were a whole lot of weird skills that he wasn’t really interested in taking, but he did find it interesting that they existed.

General: [Fashionista (Common) This skill allows you to select one piece in each of the standard equipment slots and designate them as your outfit. Any piece in your outfit will clean and repair itself upon activating this skill with a mana or energy cost. All pieces of clothing that are torn or removed from the worn piece will be destroyed upon activation. You may also slightly vary your outfit by altering it’s color and some minor physical aspects. This skill will also keep you groomed for a negligible mana or energy cost over time. Cost scales with material rarity, density and grade.]

While the skill seemed useful, most of the clothes Felix wore were capable of regenerating themselves anyways. As for the rest of the skill, he wasn’t willing to dedicate an entire skill to grooming himself.

General: [Aware (Uncommon) This skill increases your Perception and the range of your senses. You will be alerted of incoming danger so long as any of your senses detect it in any capacity. This skill scales heavily with your Perception. WARNING: This skill is incompatible with Reaper’s Senses and will replace it if taken.]

Being informed of danger sounded great but replacing a Legendary skill with an Uncommon one sounded idiotic so Felix ignored it.

General: [Toxin Affinity (Rare) This skill allows you to convert a portion of any toxins or poisons you ingest into something useful. The effects vary by the ingested substance and only a portion of it is converted. This skill scales heavily with Endurance. Higher grade toxins will be harder to digest and only a smaller portion of them will be converted.]

While it was interesting, it was interesting because it gave Felix a little bit of a confidence boost because he had already started doing that himself. He had already pushed his cells to digest poisons and convert them to energy when he simulated Erolan’s cells. He didn’t even need to take the skill at all.

Most of the other skills he saw were very much System Fuckery so he didn’t bother with them but one in particular stood out to him.

General: [Studious (Rare) This skill will highlight mistakes you’ve made that you have been taught to avoid. This skill will not show you anything new but will aid in learning new skills and abilities. This skill scales heavily on the quality of your previous instruction. It will not correct incorrect teachings. This skill reinforces things you have already learned but haven’t fully grasped. This skill scales heavily with your Perception and Intelligence.]

While it was a System Fuckery skill, Felix took it anyways. He had a free slot and it seemed useful to him. He was hoping it would bridge the gap between being under direct tutelage and being out in the real world.

Though he wasn’t excited about every skill, he for the first time, had filled all his skill slots. He was satisfied with his skill selection so he simply waited for Aldahn to finish while he practiced his spell casting. He hadn’t made much progress in that he couldn’t cast a whole other spell, but it was getting progressively easier so he figured he was getting close. He was also pretty sure his range was increasing slightly but it was hard to tell because he wasn’t actually measuring it.

Aldahn finished with the sword and handed it to Felix who carefully carried it back over to the worktable. He was more careful than he had to be but he was distracted and in awe at the transformation. Nothing had visually changed, not really, but it did look different. It was like an instinct or feeling he got when he looked at it. Before it was an enchanted piece of metal, a sword. Now it was like a whole entity.

Even though he had contributed to it’s creation, it looked homogenous to him now, which was ironic because it wasn’t even done.

Fralyna saw him walk out with the sword from the windowed design room and hurried down to finish the process. The first thing they did was disassemble the blade and coat the metal in some material that looked like resin to Felix. It dried completely differently though and created a very light coating on the entire blade that looked like an incredibly thin layer of glass. She said it helped to protect the enchantment.

They fastened the cross guard to the blade then the handle followed by the pommel by fusing them to the metal itself. After that, they placed the blade on the table in the design room and Aldahn came up to approve it. Edemari also gave it a once over followed by Krinitor, who was still there. Aldahn had some notes but they were so minor, there was no need to actually do anything about them. They were just minor changes he had only thought of when he examined the final product.

With three approvals, they sharpened the sword and placed it into one of the meeting rooms on a small enchanted stand that caused it to float and spin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .