The next item on his agenda now that he had killed a bunch of creatures was to hand in the corpses for points and take a look at experimenting with his body. After that, he wanted to track down the weird whispering on the ambient anima he had been hearing. He knew he was close to it and he had every intention of figuring out what the hell it was.

Felix dropped a temporary anchor where he stood and also measured and memorized the coordinates just in case. With that done, he opened a portal back to the evaluation chamber and stepped through.

Looking up, it appeared to be morning as the sun was just rising over the horizon, not visible yet but the horizon sported a colorful gradient band.

There was no one else in line so Felix walked right up and knocked on the door. It opened just a moment later and he stepped inside where he saw Orav holding the door for him.

“Ah, the Pocket Home and Demitium, right?”

Felix nodded, “Correct.”

Felix walked over to one of the walls that was out of the direct line of sight and opened his Pocket Home. He used a series of Force spells to move balls of corpses through the portal as big as he could fit through the opening.

Orav didn’t even question him hiding the portal and once Felix had completely emptied his Pocket Home of corpses, he personally walked over to the desk and offered the chunk he had carved out of the Leviathan.

Orav immediately took and examined it then smiled widely, “This is a great find. I appreciate you leaving enough for us to research and examine. I’d recon there’s enough here for… S on quality.”

Felix’s eyes widened, he had been expecting a B and hoping for an A. S wasn’t the highest, that was SSS, but the difference in points was just 25% between S and SSS so Felix was ecstatic for an S in quality.

He emptied the rest of the corpses he didn’t need from his soul space and Orav directed his assistants to retrieve the rest of Felix’s pile and assess them. Just like last time, it only took them a few minutes to sort through everything and for Felix’s points to be updated.

Checking the leaderboard, Felix was disappointed to see he was only in 40th place with almost 47 million points. He had been expecting much better considering the Leviathan alone was worth 40 million and he did not expect many people to be killing creatures like it.

Taking a peak at the top of the list, Felix saw Merric had been knocked down to third place with over 226 million points, an absolutely absurd number. Above him was someone named Arvum with just under 296 million and in first, was someone named Il Doras with just shy of 331 million points.

Before heading back to the under-coral and hunting down the whispers, Felix walked over to Orav, “Any chance I could get a look at the prize for being first?”

Orav nodded, “Of course. Follow me.”

Orav quickly directed his assistants then led Felix to the back of the Evaluation chamber warehouse and into a large office like room. Along the walls, Orav pointed him towards a row of display cases holding a handful of items.

“First place can pick any one item they wish from these. Second will pick after them and third will pick last.” Orav explained.

Felix nodded and quickly looked through the items. The first was a stick about a foot long that split and spiraled around itself and coming to a point at the tip. He identified it.

[D - Legendary] Wand of Elements

[Wand][Weapon]

This wand has been tuned to transform the very nature of magic itself and can be used to enhance your spells.

All spells in your spell list are cast 50% faster, deal 25% more damage and, if applicable, have a 50% increased area of effect and range.

When an elemental spell from your spell list is cast through the wand, gain a charge of the spell’s corresponding element. Said charges can be consumed to transform the element of other cast spells to the element of the charge or, if the spell cast has the same element type as the charge, enhance it. When a spell with the same element is cast multiple charges may be consumed to enhance it further.

Fucking spell lists.

Grim mentally chuckled, I mean, you can replicate the effect yourself. You can just increase the damage, range or area of effect yourself.

Yeah, but it’s still a cool stick that I can’t use.

Looking at the next item, Felix was equally as disappointed. It looked to be a cloak made of a rich purple silk.

[D - Epic] Cloak of the Phantom

[Cloak]

This cloak is designed to grant the wielder movement worthy of a phantom.

All mobility skills or spell list spells cast have 50% increased range and decreased cast time.

NOTE: This effect does not function with Reaper’s skills.

When a mobility spell from your spell list or skill is cast, you may choose to double the resource cost to camouflage yourself during the skill. You may also choose to double the resource cost again to render yourself invisible for a maximum of 1 second. This ability has a 30 seconds cooldown.

NOTE: This effect does not function with Reaper’s skills.

Ugh. At least it’s notifying me ahead of time.

After that there was a full set of leather armor followed by a pair of boots and finally a hat. The armor had something to do with stealth skills and abilities and, handily included a note for Felix that it would not function with his reaper skills. The boots allowed the user to walk on any surface, including the air just by channeling mana into them. Considering Felix could just fly or create an imitation of that enchantment himself, he wasn’t interested.

The hat was the most interesting to him but that was a low bar. It looked old and a bit worn around the edges, made of some kind of rough grey material.

[D - Mythic] Mysterious Hat

[Hat]

The appearance of the hat changes based on the person wearing it.

Huh.

Felix pointed at the hat, “Wouldn’t this be extremely valuable?”

Orav walked over and chuckled, “Don’t put too much weight into its rarity. This hat is nothing more than a party trick.” He gestured to the other four items, “These were the items I used when I was in the D grade. I have since grown out of them. I put the hat here as a novelty more than anything.”

“I see. You ever try to sell it?”

Orav crossed his arms and nodded, “I did. Got offered a grand total of 100,000 D.”

Felix scoffed, “That’s it? It’s Mythic though.”

Orav shrugged, “Doesn’t mean much if it isn’t useful to anyone.”

Felix nodded, “Alright. Thanks for showing me. I’m going to go find myself some more points now.”

Orav smiled, “See if you can track down any more Legendary creatures.”

Felix chuckled, “I’ll see what I can do but given there’s what, just under 10 hours left?”

Orav chuckled, “Fair enough.”

Leaving the building, Felix walked around a corner and out of sight then opened a portal back to the under-coral.

Though none of the items were of particular interest to Felix, he still wanted to win and fully planned on fighting for it. If he didn’t end up winning though, which seemed like a possibility, he decided he wouldn’t be too upset considering the meager prize pool. He had already gotten what he’d actually come to this planet for, corpses to copy from.

Felix picked up the temporary anchor and made a mental note to properly craft and enchant dozens of these and store them in his soul space so he could place them down if he ever had to revisit a place.

Sitting down in the cage of coral that once housed a natural treasure, Felix reverted his body back to his own. He then entered the soul ring first and started manually harvesting all the souls he had collected.

He harvested them in chronological order only because that also allowed him to progress through them by level.

His goal with manual harvesting was just to use all the excess to finish up the layer of his soul that would suffuse his body. Paying attention to his Soul Harvest skill, it seemed it was incapable of doing what he was doing, taking the excess and moving it into his Soul Space so it was effectively wiped clean. It made sense to him because even The System wasn’t supposed to be able to affect his Soul Space. That meant it couldn’t automate that step in the process.

Ding You have become more proficient with the Class skill: [Legendary] Soul Reap (Novice II => Novice III)

Felix harvested the souls as he always did, stripping out what was clean and he could use then integrating that into his own soul. Anything that screamed bloodlust, aggression or domination was fused to his Persona’s outer layer and finally everything else was treated just like a highly concentrated ball of anima.

He cleaned and partially affinized the anima using his own soul then fused it into the suffusing layer of his Persona’s soul.

By the time he got to Damoth’s soul, he had already finished the layer entirely. He could always make it denser and he fully intended on doing so eventually but before he got to that, he wanted to test the layer and if it worked, he would have to replicate it in his real body and would need even more anima to do so.

Felix quickly removed all the Aucore cells on his Persona’s arms then swapped over to its body.

He sat down and carefully manipulated the layer of soul he had created and fit it into all the cells of his body. He found he couldn’t just push it into a finger, he had to manually force it in, hold it there, and then fuse it to the cells themselves.

As Erolan had so kindly demonstrated to Felix before, the connection points between the body and soul were spread far apart and there were realistically only 7 of them for most people. What he was effectively doing, at least in his mind, was connecting each and every cell of his body to his soul, creating countless anchor points and hopefully, making his cells stronger and smarter.

Eventually he would look at connecting it on a deeper level but for now, this would be enough. It took him almost an hour to fully connect his hand to the layer of his soul but from there it became faster. It was much easier for him to fuse his soul to his body when he was able to start from somewhere, so extending it out from his hand to his whole arm took minutes rather than hours.

Once he had finished suffusing his entire body, he walked around, stretched, jumped and generally felt out his Persona’s body. He didn’t have a stat sheet so he couldn’t be certain by how much, but Felix immediately felt the difference. His Strength, Agility, Vitality and Endurance had all increased by more than 50% by his estimates. His Dexterity and Perception also seemed a little better, but by around 10% if he had to guess.

On top of all that though, his Persona body suddenly felt less like a puppet and much more like his real body. Ironically, it actually felt a little more comfortable to him right now but he suspected that would completely flip once he suffused his real body with his real soul.

More subtly, he felt more in control of his Persona body on a micro level. He was more in tune with the cells and could give them direction. He didn’t have the same granular control he had with his real body, but he found he had more control over the modifications he had already made for example.

He excitedly hopped back into his real body then looked into his blood ring and started examining the creatures he had killed in search of anything he could steal. Unfortunately everything up until Damoth was garbage. There was not a single cell that he found remotely interesting.

Damoth though, had simple Force organs with a small network of cores that Felix thought was cool but didn’t bother with. It all required more space than he was willing to give up in his own body. Damoth did however, have some of the densest and just plain strongest muscles he had ever seen.

The strongest muscles were in the tail so that’s where he drew the most inspiration from as he carefully replaced his own muscle cells with cells based on Damoth’s.

When he was done, Felix popped back out of the ring, switched bodies and immediately felt both lighter and heavier at the same time. It was like his muscles had been stretched tighter over his entire body along with being denser. On the other hand, he walked around and felt much stronger.

He tested out his muscles by increasing Eretheas’ weight until he could just barely lift it and swung the axe around. Other than obliterating some coral which was incredibly satisfying, Felix almost immediately noticed the downside as he used them. The muscle cells were incredibly inefficient and used thousands of energy per second.

Considering his cycling was much worse in his Persona and his energy didn’t restore itself nearly as quickly, he wasn’t sure it was even a viable modification.

On the other hand, he could swing Eretheas and completely obliterate his enemies just by punching them, at least that’s how he felt.

He reverted back to his own body and moved back to the blood ring where, instead of looking at the Leviathan’s body, he compared his Persona’s body to his own. He wanted to try and figure out both why the energy cycling was less efficient and why he couldn’t restore his energy with mana.

He only managed to find an answer to the first though which was just that he hadn’t trained his cells at all. In his real body, he had run, fought and exercised while starving his whole body of energy, causing it to grow accustomed to using less energy as they grew.

His Persona body though was like a newborn and he hadn’t gotten around to training it. It also used new fresh cells every time he modified them. He made a mental note to start starving his Persona cells but he had reservations. Specifically, he was putting cells like Damoth’s and other large creatures in his Persona that weren’t efficient at all. He had no idea how they would react to being starved of energy. It might not even be possible at all to make them more efficient.

Finally looking at the Leviathan, Felix dismissed most of its body because its muscles and organs were based mostly on structure and were too big respectively. What he was really interested in though were the specifics of the cells themselves.

Just like the Chameleon Tigers, and the Dhantoas, it seemed to have temporarily buffed its stats by switching forms. Felix had somewhat adapted this into his Persona body but he couldn’t switch mid battle. The Leviathan had done exactly that and very efficiently so.

Felix sifted through its mana organs and memorized the attunements they produced then compared its cells against his Persona’s and carefully modified them. He experimented with combining the attunements and cells, tuning them to get as much out of them as he could.

What he ended up with was that instead of just buffing a single stat, he managed to buff two at once. He had also increased the amount he buffed them by 50% and found an efficient way to buff his vitality as well.

He still didn’t have mana channels to support them yet so his changing the buff in the middle of battle was still a pipe dream, but when he exited the ring and swapped bodies, he was already elated.

He switched the buff over to Strength and Agility because he didn’t want to keep watching his body move in slow motion and immediately noticed his Agility surpass his real body’s. The change was so drastic that he spent a little while adjusting and testing the limits on the ground, random stones and the coral pillars.

As he grew more accustomed to the changes, he couldn’t help but feel exited for once he finally applied the same changes to his real body. His Persona was essentially a lab where he could test and experiment, doubling as a suit of armor that had already saved his life once before. Despite his Persona’s body’s advantages, his real body still felt more appropriate to him and given the same buffs, would easily surpass his Persona’s stats.

He briefly toyed with the idea of making the two bodies look identical but quickly dismissed the idea because having a disguise, an alternate persona was too appealing to him. It allowed him to enter competitions and divert the attention away from himself.

He definitely decided he needed to put more work into figuring it all out though.

Flying off into the distance, Felix continued in the direction where he had previously sensed the whispers coming from. Felix tuned into his soul senses and really listened for what he had previously been blocking out.

He adjusted his flight by a couple degrees at a time until he was pretty sure he had the right direction. He continued flying through the air and gradually, the whispers grew. They grew from whispers to noises and from noises to distant screams.

It didn’t get any louder than that though. Felix found the origin point, or at least he thought so. As far as he could tell, when he moved in any direction the feeling was slowly drowned out. Unfortunately, looking around him, there was nothing.

The under-coral had slightly changed in that there were no more mana pools but that just made everything incredibly dull. All he saw was the rocky cracked ground and countless coral pillars in every direction. There weren’t even many creatures around, any as far as he could see.

Felix sighed as he realized there was likely nothing here anymore. His best guess was that something had happened around here long ago and the echo of it still permeated the ambient anima.

He flew up to the coral roof above to try and find a cave to escape but stopped short. As he flew upwards, the screams grew just the slightest bit fainter.

It’s fucking under me? How many more layers are there?

Felix immediately shot himself down to the ground then launched Light Orbs off in every direction. While he could have just started digging down, he was certain that would take weeks so instead, he pulled out a portal spell form for Trelas and dropped it to the ground.

Felix pushed just enough mana through its channels that it could hold its form then carefully pulled the mana free from the mold and held it aloft. He used every bit of his focus to keep the mana in place as he carefully modified the spell form.

Almost immediately, he dropped it. It felt like what he was doing required at least 30 spell levels of focus and by his measurements, he had only ever achieved 15. He tried a few more times and got marginally farther but ultimately, decided he would have to cheat.

Once he pulled the spell form made of mana free, he solidified it. The entire spell form became thread thin and incredibly fragile, but it held itself together without Felix having to do much.

From there, he held it aloft as he carefully modified the spell form. Instead of an anchor, Felix swapped out the target to point in a direction, directly downwards. He had to modify the rest of the portal a little bit but ultimately, he was happy with the result.

He spent a half hour scrutinizing its shape until he was confident enough to revert it to gaseous mana and start filling it.

He couldn’t use an exact mold because he needed to modify its direction and distance during the cast. He could have made a new mold with an empty target like he had when he foolishly tried to kill Erolan, but he wanted to be able to cast portals without molds eventually and figured it was good practice.

As it turned out, casting portals free form was easier on a certain level. The spell form’s flaws more often than not seemed to iron themselves out as the mana accelerated through the spell form.

He quickly ran out of mana using just his pool so he pulled a battery out of his soul space and drained it, followed by another so his mana pool wasn’t empty.

Just over 4 million mana later, a 2 meter wide circle appeared in the air before him. Looking through, he saw a whole lot of nothing. Even reaching his hand forwards, he simply hit solid stone. Felix pumped more mana into the spell form then started moving the target slowly.

With the target being actively moved, the portal required a lot more mana to sustain it but Felix figured he had a few minutes worth of mana at least. He also didn’t dare move it too quickly so it didn’t suddenly need a burst of mana and risk the portal closing itself.

Now that the spell was cast, it didn’t require as much active focus from him so he split his attention towards his soul senses where he tried to sense through the portal. At first he wasn’t getting much but as he moved it around, the screams grew so loud they echoed through the portal and Felix knew he had to be getting close.

He continued pushing the portal downwards and zig zagging it back and forth until finally, the light from his Orbs pierced the veil of the portal and he was no longer staring at solid stone. Instead, he looked through the portal and saw the opposite end of a hallway carved directly out of the stone deep below him.

He was certain he had found the right place because he had to actively fight back against the screaming now. Not only did his soul senses feel it, but somehow that had translated directly to his mind in the form of a piercing migraine. Were it not for the fact that it did no damage, he would have thought it was an attack.

He took a couple minutes to get used to it before he picked up the mold he had used as a template and stepped through the portal.

Felix erected his Force Shield around himself then shot a Light Orb towards the walls so he could see. Looking down the hallway, he saw a collapsed section to his left and a bend in the corridor on his right.

He started with the collapsed section where he walked over and used his new found strength to remove large boulders from the pile and clear the way. His biggest problem was that he had nowhere to put the boulders he removed so he ended up opening his Pocket Home and just tossing them in.

Once he had cleared enough, Felix spotted a trio of doors, one on each wall at the end of the hall. He first cleared all the rubble which seemed to have come from the ceiling, that had partially collapsed, then headed through the first one.

The doors themselves were far thicker than Felix had been expecting and were heavily reinforced, likely why they had survived when the ceiling hadn’t. Even the hinges were still perfectly functional which Felix found simply astonishing.

He ducked his Persona’s head a little to peer into the room and saw what appeared to be an operating theater. In the center of the room was a table with straps and chains dangling off of it. Along the walls were tables with various tools and on the walls, there were the remnants of arcane symbols that once depicted a series of spells.

There was nothing he could glean from them though, not even an intact node as the wall appeared to have been completely charred and partially melted. The fact that any of the enchantment or spell work remained at all was a miracle.

Felix looked through the tools and saw many scalpels of many different materials along with clamps, scissors, forceps and retractors. He didn’t touch any of them though and after looking around once, backed up and closed the door again. The room across the hall was a mirror of the first and even had the same charring on the walls.

The last door, the one at the end of the hall, Felix opened to reveal what appeared to be a closet. He briefly looked through some of the shelves but just found gloves, tools, gauze, bandages and so on, nothing of interest.

Turning around, Felix took a second to suppress the screaming he felt from the anima further then headed towards the opposite end of the hall. He followed it as it turned to the right where he was immediately greeted by windows on either side of the hall.

Through each one of the windows, he saw what was essentially a cell. The vast majority of them contained skeletons and mush and judging from the variety, Felix was tempted to call this a zoo.

The cells stretched on throughout the hall all the way to the end where it split off to the left and right. Felix looked right and saw a room at the end that was filled with broken glass. He walked over until he could look in and saw what was once a large cell, much bigger than the ones lining the walls.

He didn’t bother walking into the room and instead turned around and checked the other hall. He followed it for a bit where he saw a few more larger cells but mostly just small cells. Surprisingly, he hadn’t seen a single cell that didn’t contain some kind of remains other than the ones that were broken open. Whenever this place had been functional, it had to have been completely full.

He followed the hall right into a large open area that he suspected was once the lobby. He saw two other halls branching off of this one and off the last wall, a simple cylindrical room that he suspected had once been the portal destination, judging from the damaged anchor embedded in the floor.

Felix turned away from the anchor and immediately got knocked to the ground by something hitting him in the face. His Force Shield had instantly broken which made Felix panic a little bit. He tried to push himself back up but his muscles were contracting against his will so he didn’t get far before he was kicked back a few meters.

Once again, his muscles spasmed but this time, he pushed back with his Persona’s soul, now suffusing his cells, and almost immediately felt the effect dissipate. Felix hopped to his feet and turned to look at something that he was somewhat sure was once a Rhunar man.

Now, Lightning arced between its horns and its body was a disgusting mess of flesh that had been fused together. In shape alone, it was humanoid but everything else made it an abomination.

[D - Corrupted] Test Subject #7 (Lvl 298)

Its level is so low. How is it punching and kicking me this hard?

Felix got to his feet, quickly recast his air bubble, and walked forwards, not really feeling threatened by the creature that hadn’t even hit level 300. Before he could get closer than a few meters away though, the creature punched him in the stomach again and sent a burst of Lightning into his body.

He pushed his cells to listen to him and ignore the Lightning to regain control of his body. It was still wreaking havoc but there wasn’t exactly much he could do about that at the moment. He pushed his cells to stay like that then walked right up to #7, taking a punch to the shoulder to do so.

Felix pushed back against the punch and braced himself with a Force spell then wound up and punched forwards as hard as he could. His fist connected with #7’s chest and sent him flying into the far wall.

They hit the stone and briefly slumped down before disappearing in a burst of Lightning and burying their foot in Felix’s side. He hadn’t been ready for an attack from that direction but he had the spell prepared so he caught himself after sliding just a meter away. Felix turned and stepped towards the creature then swung his arm forwards for a right hook but completely missed.

Test Subject #7 had vanished from that spot then Felix felt a kick to the back of his knees followed very shortly by a punch to the right side of his head.

Felix crumpled to the ground and then saw a burst of Lightning hit the ground right in front of his face. He rolled backwards and punched #7 in the gut while they were keeled over then once in the head while they were briefly in the air and unable to move.

Using his left arm, Felix reached out to grab its neck but missed and instead got its arm. He reached up and curled his fingers around its throat with his free hand then held it aloft and examined it. As he did, the creature shrouded its entire body in arcs of Lightning and thrashed about in a blur.

Somehow, this random creature was faster than he was by a decent margin. In theory, he figured his stats should have been higher than just about everything at his level and most things in his grade. This creature was below his level and somehow, had him beat. Even its strength was close despite his ridiculous modifications.

Felix sighed, crushed its throat and punched it in the face then activated his soul ring and stowed the body in his soul space.

Ding You have slain [D - Corrupted] Test Subject #7 (Lvl 298)

He looked back at the room he was in and decided to head down the left hall, the one that mirrored the hall he had come from.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though the hall was exactly the same as the one he had entered from, a mirror image and equally as empty. He headed back towards the lobby but on the way back, crumpled to his knees as he felt his entire body rattle, like it was ready to burst.

Felix resisted the effect as much as he could and screamed at his cells to each individually fight back. It was enough to keep him alive and conscious for the minute or so it took him to rise to his feet and trudge through the effect towards its source.

[D - Corrupted] Test Subject #2 (Lvl 254)

Right in front of him there appeared to be a male elf that had its mouth open unnaturally large. Felix cast a quick Lightning Bolt at it as he walked just to shut it up for a second. The Lightning coursed through its body and caused it to tense up just long enough for Felix to leap forwards and punch it right in its open mouth.

He felt his hand hit and crush something. Once #2 hit the ground, it immediately scrambled and tried to run away but it didn’t get further than a few meters before Felix beheaded it with Eretheas.

He absorbed its soul and stowed the body in his soul space then looked towards the last room of the chamber.

In fighting the two Test Subjects, Felix had lost just 5 of his almost 105 thousand health pool so he was confident he could keep looking. He erected his Force Shield again in case it provided value once again then took two steps forward and dropped to his knees.

He hadn’t actually been attacked at all, he had just run out of energy without realizing it. Felix sighed and reverted to his real body where he could produce energy and meditated for a few minutes with Grim on the lookout.

It currently took him just under an hour to fill his energy core while meditating which he was more than happy to wait for. He reactivated his Persona body and pressed on into the last hall of the lobby area.

He walked down a hall and saw a series of doors along the walls. He opened one and found what had once been an office before it had been completely burned down. All of the doors yielded the same result, a charred office so Felix continued following the hall to it’s end where he saw a stair case that descended about 50 meters to a large metal door.

Just in front of the door, Felix spotted what looked to be a female demon. She had entirely reddish skin and a single horn atop her head, just like the attendant at the teleportation hub that had first greeted him when he had arrived in Telviras.

[D - Corrupted] Test Subject #4 (Lvl 316)

Felix looked down at her for just a few moments before she noticed him and smiled. Felix was taken aback at first but cautiously waved nonetheless.

She immediately started screaming, “MINE!”

Though her screams weren’t nearly as loud or harmful as #4’s, hers carried a stream of Fire along with them. Felix jumped back a couple steps as the entire staircase and part of the hall way beyond was filled with flames.

He swapped out his Force Shield for a normal Mana Shield then slowly walked forwards as the flames dissipated. He reached the end of the hall and looked down the staircase where the woman sat exactly where she had been before.

She looked at him for a few seconds then Felix felt a huge tug on his mana as his Mana Shield blocked her fist followed almost immediately by a huge burst of flame.

Judging from the mana expenditure alone, Felix was pretty sure that one punch would have taken at least half of his Persona’s health outright. Considering the Leviathan had done something similar but required time to build up the ability, Felix was a little terrified.

Whatever had been done to this woman, whether or not it had made her crazy, had also imbued her with ridiculous Strength. The idea of figuring out what that was, especially considering her level was both exciting and a little worrisome, considering the apparent side effects that all three test subjects he met displayed.

The woman struck the shield again with her opposite fist, draining a few hundred thousand mana once again. She alternated her fists and slammed against the shield making it obvious to Felix that in this war of attrition, he was bound to lose.

He didn’t want to just drop the shield though because that would leave him completely open and he didn’t really have a great way of fighting her just yet. He started by launching her back into the ceiling of the stairs with a burst of Force, just to give himself some breathing room.

She fell to the floor then, with a burst of flames beneath her feet, leapt at Felix faster than he could react to. She landed right in front of him leaving behind a trail of flames that quickly dissipated. This time, she smashed her head into the Shield, once again with flames appearing behind her head, like an afterimage.

Felix kept the shield up but launched himself backwards this time, down the hall and away from #4. She slowly bent her legs then burst through the hallways, a trail of fire the only indication of where she had been.

Felix jumped into the air and over her, allowing her momentum to build distance for him. He kept himself in the air and as she turned and bent her legs again to prepare for another leap, Felix hit her with a well timed, underpowered Lightning Bolt.

He hit her just after her legs had tensed causing her to lose her ability to direct herself and instead of going forwards, she leapt straight up into the ceiling. Her head created a small crater in the stone above her and she fell to the ground like a rag doll. She was clearly dazed so Felix took the opportunity to cast a series of Force spells on her head.

He lifted it up just an inch then slammed her skull back down into the stone floor repeatedly until he got the notification he was waiting for.

Ding You have slain [D - Corrupted] Test Subject #4 (Lvl 316)

Felix immediately activated his soul ring then leapt forwards and stowed her body in his soul space.

It’s definitely ominous that all of them were completely insane.

Yeah, it’s odd too. Erolan I understood because he had been left sealed in his body with just his own mind to talk to for a ridiculous amount of time. These people though…

I mean we don’t know how long they’ve been here, right?

This place wasn’t preserved by The System, so I couldn’t have been that long.

I guess, still could have been a while.

Felix briefly topped up his mana pool with one of the batteries then kept it in his hand and used his passive regeneration to recharge it as he walked up to the door #4 had been in front of.

The large metal door looked almost like a vault door to Felix except that he didn’t see any obvious way of opening it. It was blackened and charred no doubt from #4’s attempts at getting in but the damage was superficial. The door didn’t appear to have been warped or melted in any way.

Felix briefly tried a number of spells and simply running mana through the door but when nothing worked, he resorted to portals once again. He already had a mold he had made to get down here so he simply used it as a template and adjusted the direction and distance of the portal before filling it with mana.

Now that he had done it once, or more likely because of the short distance, Felix found maintaining this spell form in the air as he filled it with mana much easier.

As though a hole had suddenly been drilled through the door, Felix stepped through the almost two meter thick metal wall. Knowing now how thick it was, Felix wasn’t sure it was ever intended to open at all.

Looking back at it from the other side as he pulled the mold back through and closed the portal, he didn’t see any hinges or door knobs so he was convinced the previous residents simply portaled across as well.

It was odd though because beyond the metal wall, Felix looked into what looked almost like a massive library. Instead of just books though, the shelves were also filled with boxes, drawers, and stacks of files.

The room had 10 sets of shelves that extended back almost a hundred meters and all the way up to the 3 meter ceiling above. He floated through each of the shelves making sure his skill was scanning everything and replacing the garbage he had in his Memory Palace’s shelves.

Once everything had been scanned, Felix got a little more daring and examined some of the drawers. He had no reason to believe they would be trapped but he was as careful as he could be nonetheless.

He knew he didn’t have any of the books or files that were hidden in boxes and drawers scanned until he saw them so if the drawers were set to destroy their contents upon being opened, he was screwed.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t very well trained in finding traps or mechanisms like that so he first ran a wave of mana through the drawer to detect any channels or inlays but found none. To avoid any other possible issues, Felix decided to do something a little extravagant.

He pulled his portal mold back out of his soul space and filled it with mana then drew out the spell form and made some adjustments. He minimized the size and distance to just a couple inches each then cast it in front of the drawer.

Once he could see inside, his Scan Literature skill scanned the contents and he carefully moved the portal over to the next drawer. It cost him his entire mana pool to get through all the drawers and boxes but he decided it was well worth it.

He started manually regenerating his mana with the vortex imagery in his mind as he finally dared to physically interact with the drawers. He opened one and then another, followed by every box and drawer in the room. It turned out none of them were trapped at all but Felix was still happy he had scanned the room the way he had ahead of time because it wasn’t worth the risk.

To Felix, if his suspicions were correct, the information in this room was invaluable to him. Grim immediately started sorting through it all as Felix searched the room for anything that may have been hidden from direct sight.

He didn’t actually find anything but decided he would come back and potentially be more destructive once he had completely cleared the building.

The only exit off the library, other than wall he had walked through to get in, was a hall way on the opposite side of the room. Felix walked over and started exploring where he found multiple doors.

He did his best to search for traps but when he found none, decided to just open the door. The door was locked though and Felix saw some kind of keyhole. He didn’t want to deal with it and decided he might as well get more practice in with portals.

He filled the mold once again then lifted the spell form up and out then modified it and finally cast it. He stepped through the door and unlocked it from the inside then dragged the portal spell form with him and made sure all the doors off the hallways were unlocked. Once that was done, he dismissed the spell form and resumed manually regenerating mana into his pool, followed by his empty batteries.

The rooms themselves appeared to all be offices except for one that was more like a lobby containing multiple doors to other rooms.

All of the offices were largely identical with a desk in the middle, a chair and some book shelves on the walls. Felix searched through the completely mundane drawers and shelves finding almost exclusively more documents. There were some trinkets, office supplies and other clutter but he had no interest in them.

He continued searching each of the offices and grew increasingly disappointed he wasn’t finding anything of value. Grim put him at ease though when he assured him the documents he was scanning were filled with incredibly valuable information.

Once the mundane task of manually searching each office was complete, Felix headed into the last room of the hallway. The room appeared to be some kind of lounge, sitting area, kitchen with counters, tables, chairs, couches and once enchanted appliances. The cooling and preservation enchantments on the fridge were mundane and boring, nothing new as were the enchantments on everything else he found.

He started opening doors after doing his best to check them for traps and the first few, appeared to be mundane storage closets. They contained shelves with everything from salt to extra bandages. He didn’t bother taking any of it and simply moved on until he found a room worth looking into.

The first room he found other than storage, and the second last door in the room, was another office. This office though was much bigger than the ones he had just searched through. The office was generally laid out in a similar fashion except it had more book cases, a bigger desk along with a seating area and its own small kitchen. Felix determined it was clearly the executive office.

He immediately walked over to the shelves where he made sure to scan everything before he walked over to the desk and opened all of the drawers. Inside he found some surgical tools, scalpels and a few other odds and ends along with plenty of documents and journals.

He made sure he had everything in his Memory Palace before he started getting a little more aggressive with the furniture in an attempt to find anything that may have been hidden. As he walked over to the bookshelf and reached forwards to start pulling the books, Felix stopped himself.

Looking at the shelf, there was about an inch of space from the edge of the shelf to the books and that space was covered in dust except for in front and around the books themselves. On the shelf around the book ends and empty space, the dust was settled and undisturbed.

Once he saw it, Felix looked around and it became painfully obvious that someone else at some point had been here. Felix wasn’t trained to look for such things so it had taken him a while to notice but he quickly walked into a few of the other offices and the file room shaped like a library. He immediately recognized the same patterns in each of them.

He quickly checked to see if the dust had been disturbed anywhere else but didn’t find any indication that information had been taken and not replaced.

I guess we should be thankful they put everything back. Whoever they were.

Or at least that’s how they made it look.

Sure, fair enough.

Walking back to the executive office, Felix pulled on all the books to see if he could find anything that had been hidden but found nothing.

He didn’t bother tearing all the other rooms apart just yet and instead headed towards the last door he hadn’t searched, a large metal door, with a handle this time.

Felix pulled the door open which took a noticeable but manageable amount of strength and revealed what looked to him like a warehouse sized, walk in refrigerator. The entire inside of the room was made of metal, including the walls and shelves. The shelves were laid out like a library or a warehouse and covered in metal crates of various sizes.

The room itself was frigid, to the point where Felix had to cast a spell to heat himself up. He was pretty sure that If he wasn’t still maintaining the air bubble around his head, he would have gotten frost burn in his lungs.

Felix stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, after making sure it didn’t have any kind of locking mechanism. He walked over to the first shelf and saw a label on the shelf itself that read: “DR-374: Jappemoth.”

The next one down from that read: “DR-521: Develkad.”

Felix carefully removed the box above the first label and set it down on the ground then pried open the top which was sealed with suction rather than anything physical.

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Inside, he saw what appeared to be the corpse of a small bird. He closed the box again and opened the next one where rather than a corpse, he found what looked to be a set of organs carefully suspended in some liquid.

Holy shit. Grim, you got any context I need to know?

Yeah, I’ve gone through most of it. It’s exactly what it looks like.

Got a ledger with a total count of some kind?

Yeah, according to the logs kept in the fancy office, there should be 5852 total specimens.

Holy shit. There’s no way I can move all this, is there?

I don’t think it would fit in your Pocket Home, no.

Alright new plan. I open a portal for Orav and let him down here so his assistants can just unload everything themselves. Before I do that though, can you direct me to-

Yup, already on it. Two shelves to your left, 3rd shelf from the bottom, about a quarter of the way down. Look for BM-2.

Felix followed Grim’s directions and found the label: “BM-2: Phoenix.”

After excitedly, but carefully, pulling the box down, Felix opened it to reveal a single wing. The wing had been plucked making it look kind of like a small muscular arm and it was not severed cleanly. Part of the shoulder and body were still attached to it along with some vertebrae.

Felix very carefully reached down and touched the wing which actually killed a chunk of his finger due to the temperature, but he still managed to stow it in his soul space. Felix removed the label from the shelf so no one would have any idea what had been there then moved on to the next item Grim directed him to.

All in all, he ended up taking 16 of the specimens for himself, making sure to get rid of the labels. Before he handed this location in though, he walked back into the offices and file room and, with Grim’s help identifying them, destroyed all of the records of what had been in the room. He didn’t want Orav to know what he had taken.

With all that done, Felix pulled out the temporary anchor he had previously used and dropped it right in front of the door to the refrigerated warehouse. He kept the door closed so everything was preserved then carefully opened a portal back to the field in front of the evaluation chamber.

After having used the mold to open portals throughout the office area of the facility, Felix was finding it much easier to hold the portal spell form steady. He no longer dropped the spell form or had to restart at all. He managed to hold it steady on his first try despite using coordinates which were more complicated.

Felix stepped through, closed the portal and got in line for the evaluation chamber with just under an hour left. The line was over 20 people long so Felix was understandably worried he wouldn’t be able to get in. It seemed as though many people were trying to submit as much as they could right before the end.

As he looked towards the front of the line, Felix felt much better about his odds of getting evaluated. It seemed as though Orav had expected and planned for this. There were multiple people being evaluated at once and, from the glimpses he caught through the door, he had what must of been hundreds of assistants.

Despite his additional help, Felix was still surprised when he was at the front of the line just over 20 minutes later.

Orav beckoned him forwards in a rush because there were another 20 or so people behind him.

Orav pulled Felix aside without bringing him into the evaluation chamber at all, “How much approximately do you have to hand in?”

“5836.”

Orav chuckled, “We’re going to evaluate the rest of the line. Even if we go over the time limit, don’t worry. Your submissions will still count. We just ended up with more heavy hitters than we expected.”

Felix nodded, “Sure. You’ll call me when you’re ready then?”

Orav nodded, “Yes. Uh… what’s your name? Your identification is… weird.”

“Arthur.”

Orav nodded, “I’ll call on you soon.”

Felix nodded and walked over to the field. HIs submissions were guaranteed to count so he was more than happy to just sit and wait, he had plenty of things he wanted to do in the meantime anyways. Before he dealt with any of that though, Felix felt out his soul bond and felt Nova somewhere off to his right. Nova was a fair distance away but moving towards him very quickly so he simply waited.

In the meantime, he worked on casting as many spell levels as he could. While he wanted to cast as many as possible and he would keep working at it, his immediate goal was to be able to raw cast the portal spell form without the mold. In order to do so he was going to have to double his current focus capacity which was getting increasingly difficult.

Before now, he had felt himself making progress and in turn, he had been able to cast more and more spells in just a short time. Now, it felt like he had reached a wall of some kind. It wasn’t that he wasn’t progressing at all, it was just that he was starting to feel like he had reached the limit of his mind’s capacity or at least, he was getting close to it. He suspected he would be able to squeeze one more spell level of simultaneous casts but he wasn’t sure he could get any further than that as he was.

He was really hoping he found a way to modify his mind as soon as possible so he could keep practicing. Until then though, he was starting to believe he was better off training and increasing his cast range and decreasing his cast time because his gains there were still very fast.

Still, he couldn’t help but dream of a possible future where he could cast portals with a figurative snap of his fingers. After watching the memory crystal of Edras dealing with the natural disasters, the idea of using portals in combat had stuck with him.

As Felix practiced, though he was focused on the spell forms, his eyes were pointed in Nova’s direction. He saw the field stretch out before him before it climbed up the side of a tall mountain. Suddenly, a dark figure topped by a white one bathed in an unnatural ray of sunlight darted around the mountain towards the evaluation chamber.

As they got closer, Felix confirmed the dark figure was in fact Nova as a Dire Wolf but it took him a few seconds to figure out the figure on top of Nova. It seemed as though there was some sort of Drakene with milky white scales and matching plate armor riding them. On top of that, they held their sword aloft and seemed to be somehow summoning a beam of warm sunlight from above.

He patiently waited as they soared through the air towards the evaluation chamber. Right as they got just a couple hundred meters away though, Nova, much to their rider’s confusion, veered downwards towards Felix.

Felix chuckled as the Drakene fruitlessly tried to redirect Nova’s flight. Nova ran right up to Felix and jumped up onto him. Despite Felix’s, or his Persona Arthur’s, massive body, Nova as a Dire Wolf was still significantly bigger.

Felix managed to remain standing though thanks in large part to his upgraded muscles, though he had to consume a large chunk of his energy to do so.

“Hello.” Felix pet and scratched Nova behind the ears, treating her much like he would a dog.

“I apologize, I only recently befriended this beast and haven’t fully trained her just yet.” The Drakene called down, still mounted to her back.

Felix looked at him for a few seconds then winced, “You mean Wolfy, my familiar?”

Fuck. I couldn’t think of a better name fast enough.

The Drakene frowned, “Wolfy? No this is- Oh, I see. It seems I was mistaken. My apologies.”

The Drakene carefully dismounted Nova and tentatively pet her from the side then turned to Felix, “My name is Il Doras, please call me Doras.”

“Arthur.”

Doras reached his hand out, “Arthur, it is a pleasure to meet you. Wolfy here is a mighty fine companion. I can’t deny my excitement at having found her on this planet nor my disappointment that we now must part ways.”

Felix nodded, “Thank you.”

Doras quickly looked over Felix’s shoulder towards the line and nodded, “I must go collect my final points. Arthur, will you join me? Wolfy has some to hand in herself and I must explain this development to Orav.”

Felix shrugged, “Sure.” Then followed Doras, along with Nova, into the line. Luckily, the line had dwindled to just a couple individuals who apparently didn’t have much to hand in because they were processed in under a minute.

Orav looked into the line and saw Felix and Doras then beckoned Doras over. He walked forwards and Orav frowned.

“Might I invite Arthur in with me? It seems I have overstepped. This,” Doras gestured to Nova, “Is Wolfy and she is Arthur’s companion. Would it be possible to reallocate the points she has submitted to him?”

Orav looked over to Arthur and nodded, “Hey Arthur, do you mind if we just deal with both of you at the same time?”

Felix shrugged, “Sure.” Then walked up and followed them into the building.

Orav turned to the crowd in the field, “No more points may be submitted at this time. We will be evaluating these two and then we will announce and distribute the rewards. I apologize for the delay.”

Orav closed the door behind him then sighed and turned to Doras, “Alright, how much you got?”

Doras just nodded then walked over to one of the walls. He closed his eyes, reached out one of his clawed fingers towards the wall then slowly his claw sunk into the stone. Felix found it a little odd he would outright damage the wall like that until his claw sunk deeper and a suddenly a golden light poured out of the point he touched.

He pushed further and the light spread until it formed a circle just over 3 meters in diameter and he pushed his hand through. The light within the circle disappeared and revealed what looked to be a very impressively manicured garden. The edges of the portal remained the same golden light which Felix took note of only because it was different from any other portals he had ever seen.

Doras led an army of assistants into the garden and after disappearing from sight for a brief moment, they streamed back out, each of them carrying a seemingly undamaged corpse.

The assistants streaming out continued for almost 20 minutes having carried easily thousands of corpses. It took the assistants almost an hour to get through everything. Once Doras had shown the assistants where the corpses were, he tried to help them carry them out but it quickly became clear that he wasn’t helping because there was no one available for him to hand the corpse to.

Once Doras realized this, he stepped over next to Felix and simply watched the progression of assistants.

Felix was thoroughly impressed at how many corpses Doras had collected and couldn’t help himself but take a peek at the standings. Doras was still easily in first place with over 370 millions points and climbing.

Felix couldn’t help himself so he looked over and identified him.

[D] Herald of the Holy Mother: Il Doras (Lvl 734)

Huh. I guess he’s…

“Hey Doras, what’s your class?”

“Paladin of the Holy Mother.” He answered almost immediately.

“This,” Felix gestured to the procession of corpses being removed from his garden, “Is incredibly impressive.”

Doras chuckled, “It isn’t overly difficult for me to slay most creatures. My class is very useful in that regard. However, it is difficult for me to move around quickly. I have been in search of a steed to remedy this and Wolfy here was the best possible stand in I could have hoped for. She made it possible for me to move quickly then I simply slew enemies from her back as we traveled. Were it not for her, I’m certain I would have ended up with just a fraction of the enemies slain.”

Felix shrugged, “I mean, the vast majority of the points come from the higher rarity creatures. You must have slain at least a few of those?”

Doras nodded, “I slew 4 Legendary creatures and somewhere between 30 and 40 Epic creatures.”

Felix’s eyes widened involuntarily, “4 legendaries? How did you even find 4 legendary creatures?”

Doras smiled then patted Nova on the head, “Wolfy mostly. We traveled quickly and were fortunate enough to encounter so many.”

They chatted casually for a little while mostly about the creatures Doras had slain and Nova while Orav and his assistants finished up with Doras’ corpses. Once they were done, Doras closed the portal to his garden by simply making a fist then walked over to Orav.

Felix quickly checked the leaderboard and saw Doras sitting at over 402 million points, a completely ridiculous number in Felix’s eyes, especially considering his own meager 47 million. Just under Doras was someone named Arvum with just shy of 370 million followed by Merric with almost 283 million points.

Orav approached and looked up at Doras, “So the Dire Wolf’s points go to Arthur then?”

Doras nodded, “Yes.”

Orav turned to Nova, “Speaking of, you have anything else to hand in?”

Nova barked then walked over to the table and began vomiting some of the remains of creatures they had eaten. Were it not for the fact that they didn’t actually have saliva or stomach acid making the corpses completely clean, it would have been disgusting.

Orav’s assistants examined the small pile in under a minute and Felix just watched his own point total jump just over 1 and a half million and Doras’ drop by about a million.

Orav sighed, “Alright Arthur, you’re the last one.”

Felix nodded then pulled out the portal mold he had been using and raw cast a portal to the temporary anchor he had dropped. Once the portal was open, Orav backed away a few steps before Felix walked through towards the vault like door of the cold storage room.

Orav tentatively took a step forwards and through the portal then waited patiently as Felix opened the door.

Felix looked back and saw Orav just standing there in complete shock, “Where the fuck are we?”

Felix shrugged, “Good question. There was this weird… instinct? and so I followed it. Ended up here. Seems to be an old research facility for transplanting mana organs into people. Had to kill a few of the Test Subjects that just hadn’t quite died. This storage room was fully functional though.”

Orav frowned then walked up to a shelf and opened one of the boxes. He looked inside for a few seconds then closed, replaced it and opened the next one.

Orav spoke to Felix without looking over as he continued to open boxes, “How many did you say there were again?”

“5836 total boxes with something in them.”

Orav nodded, “I don’t suppose they kept records, did they?”

Felix shook his head and lied, “None that I found.”

Orav nodded then walked back through the portal and into the warehouse. He disappeared into the shelves for a few minutes then walked back with a large shiny metal disc. He tossed it through the portal then gestured for Felix to close the door.

Felix did so and followed him back out of the portal then closed that too. Orav placed some sort of large contraption down on the ground, slotted a disc in the middle, then placed a few small gems into the sockets around the outside.

Felix paid careful attention as the batteries poured mana into the contraption and filled a spell form he did not recognize. He recognized a number of it’s components but 10% of them at most, including the anchor on the center disc Orav had slotted in.

Felix immediately felt out and mapped the spell form then memorized it. His suspicions as to its function was confirmed just a few seconds later when a large 5 meter wide square appeared on the ground in front of it.

Though the shape was different, looking through the square, Felix saw the exact same cold storage room he had just seen.

Orav turned to his assistants, “Catalogue the specimens but don’t remove them. This storage room is just as good as ours so no reason to waste time or space. We’ll move them at a later date now that we have an anchor set up.”

They nodded then walked through the portal that was easily big enough for 5 to walk through at once.

Orav turned to Felix and stretched out his hand causing Felix to raise a brow but shake it nonetheless, “This may have been the luckiest find on the entire planet.”

Felix shrugged, “Maybe.”

Not sure It’s really luck when I was basically dragged towards it by the ambient anima.

Orav kept shaking Felix’s hand, “It’s astounding really. The fact that research had been performed here in the past is expected, this planet is rather odd. Even the… nature of the experiments is something I could have predicted. The fact that it was so well hidden though, that it remained there for all this time. All those specimens preserved, truly extraordinary.”

Felix just nodded and tried to pull his hand back but against Orav, who was halfway through the B grade, he stood no chance and wasn’t sure Orav even noticed him pulling.

Orav wasn’t even looking at Felix anymore, his gaze was firmly locked on the portal and what little he could see through it. Nonetheless, he kept talking, “Doesn’t it just fill you with excitement? What else could be out there, hidden away like little treasure caches. Secrets to be uncovered and- it’s exhilarating!”

Felix just smiled and kept nodding.

Orav looked over to the portal, back at Felix, at the portal, then finally realized he was still holding Felix’s hand. He quickly let go and recoiled out of embarrassment then scurried into the portal, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to look around a little more while my assistants assess everything.”

He was already gone by the time he finished talking.

Felix sighed then turned back to Doras who was patiently waiting next to him, “I’m from a very remote planet and only heard about the gods recently, you mind telling me about your class and how it all works?”

Doras bowed slightly, “Of course. The Holy Mother, or rather, one of her Demigods, formed a pact with me. In exchange for fealty, they grant me power and should I impress, they provide me with resources.”

“Power how and what resources?”

“Resources are usually knowledge, credits, specific items. Could also involve trainers from the order or assistance from higher grade individuals if I need help upgrading a skill or some such. In terms of power, my class essentially.”

“So are you bonded or pacted?”

“I formed a pact with one of her Demigods.”

“Through that you just get a great class then?”

“Not exactly. I perform a soul bond with them because it makes taking orders, reading my intentions and locating me easier. It builds trust and makes it difficult to hide things. At the same time, The Holy Mother, or rather one of her followers, have taken the time to piece together a set of skills that would suit me. They select a class from a set of classes they are the progenitor’s of and distribute it. I graciously accept their tutelage and after just a few short epochs, I become far stronger than I ever could have hoped to become on my own.”

“So the pact itself isn’t giving you any stats or anything?”

“No, it is merely a part of the contract, so to speak.”

“Does that mean you are bound to The Holy Mother’s afterlife too then?”

“Yes, as part of the pact I also swore fealty to The Holy Mother, worship her and in doing so, locked in my selection of The Garden as my afterlife.”

“Was it worth it?”

He looked over at Felix and smiled, “Very much so.”

“Are your evolutions all planned out then?”

“Yes but not as of yet, they will be. As I approach my evolution, I will return to the order and they will tailor my evolutions as much as they can to suit me. This is in case I divert from the intended path, they simply adjust to me, items I’ve found, bonds I’ve made and things I’ve accomplished. They aid me in skill evolutions, along with race, class and profession of course.”

“Do you get any say?”

“Of course. I tend to simply give them a direction in which I want to go and I personally tend not to disagree with the advice of Demigods. I do know of some in the order who prefer to carve their own path directly. They sift through the available classes, races and professions themselves and use the resources to pursue them.”

“Why The Holy Mother, why not Rhonan or any other god?”

“Rhonan doesn’t do the same thing as far as I know but either way, The Holy Mother saved my life.”

Felix just frowned, still wondering about the fact that Rhonan didn’t have Paladins for some reason.

Doras continued, “I as well originated from a rather remote planet. My father was a traveler from far away but he never spoke of it. There was… a tragedy befell the secluded Drakene tribe I was raised within and my parents didn’t make it. I along with a handful of survivors managed to make it out and eventually, we were found. I was lost for many years in more ways than one. I eventually learned that my parents lived on, within The Garden. I visited them and… I finally had direction. In the face of death, the gods said no and allow me to see my parents whenever I wish. That power is ineffable and I declared fealty shortly thereafter.”

Felix nodded, “It’s certainly impressive. Was a complete shock to me when I first heard about the afterlives.”

Doras chuckled and nodded, “Yes, for me as well.”

“Then I heard you can visit. That’s….”

Doras nodded, “It’s a wonderful thing. Sometimes I feel like my brethren in the order, some of the people of the multiverse do not truly appreciate the miracle the gods offer them. They toy with their lives simply because they know they will live on within an afterlife. They slaughter without remorse and care not for their own lives.”

Felix winced.

Doras’ head fell a little, “I sometimes feel as though the value of life is often… lessened by the afterlives we have access to.”

Felix shrugged, “That’s just the tradeoff I guess. It’s bound to happen.”

Doras nodded, “Of course. It was inevitable and surely a trade I am willing to live with.”

They both remained silent for a few minutes before Doras spoke up, “This facility you found, might I inquire about it?”

Felix shrugged, “Sure.”

“Orav mentioned they stored specimens in there? The experiments? What was this facility?”

Felix shrugged, “It seems like they were implanting mana based organs into sapient creatures to see if they could make them stronger.”

“Did it work?”

Grim answered Doras’ question in Felix’s head, Yes and no. None of them were sane. Not one.

“I fought a few of them. They were definitely far stronger than their level would suggest. They weren’t exactly… their brains were fried.”

Doras nodded solemnly, “I see, that is rather disturbing. Were there records on how many experiments they conducted?”

Millions, possibly 100s of millions. I don’t have an exact number though.

Felix held back from physically widening his eyes, “A lot.”

Doras frowned, “Then that is a lot of failed experiments to dispose of.”

Felix nodded, “Presumably at least one of the gods must have known about this place, right? At least one of the patients had to have chosen an afterlife?”

Doras’ frown deepened, “Possibly. It seems likely they chose patients carefully to avoid those who were sworn. Found remote planets that hadn’t even heard of the gods.”

Felix shrugged, “Yeah, maybe. I didn’t see anything indicating that in the records though.”

Doras nodded, “I find it surprising they didn’t find any success whatsoever. Considering how well hidden they were and how plentiful their storage room was, they must have been both capable and intelligent.”

Grim provided some more information he had gotten from the records, They tried sedating the patients, charming them, hypnotizing them, wiping their memories but they always ended up with fractured minds within days of the surgery. They tried a lot and considered #4 their greatest success from early on. Not only were they unable to replicate her increase in power, but they never ended up with a more sane patient, ever again. At least, according to the records we found.

Felix shrugged, “Apparently the closest they got was this fire lady I fought.”

Doras coughed as he tried to speak too fast, but quickly recovered, “You fought this specimen?”

Felix nodded and told Doras about the fight and about how her strength was ridiculous, especially considering her level. Doras questioned him a bit more about his estimation of her increase in stats as well as the other two he had fought.

They also spoke of the creatures Doras had slain which Felix was pretty sure he was downplaying. To confirm, Felix passively got a recollection of the events from Nova at the same time which were far more fantastical than Doras let on.

As Doras described the fourth and last legendary creature he had slain, Felix’s face contorted into a frown.

He waited patiently for Doras to finish his tale before confronting him, “Doras, why are you here?”

Doras sighed, “Yes this job is beneath my capabilities. I will end up with some credits and an item but more importantly, I was seeking something for my evolution.”

“That makes more sense.”

Doras nodded, “My race is actually rather unique. After the tragedy that killed my parents we survivors had to live in the wilds for a time. We hunted and ate anything we could and this affected me and my evolution. I now search for specific creatures I can consume and in turn, purify my body. They confer me no benefits currently but they upgrade my next evolution.”

“Did you find any?”

Doras sighed, “Unfortunately not.”

Felix frowned as he recalled the thousands of corpses being pulled from his garden storage, “What are you looking for specifically?”

Doras smiled, “Though we Drakene are not descended from Dragons, I aim to mimic their majesty in some way or another.”

Felix frowned, “Isn’t that blasphemous?”

Doras shook his head, “Yes, but I will never refer to myself as Draconic in any fashion. I am merely imitating them. The order has assured me that I am not crossing the line just yet but… It is definitely a perilous path to take.”

Felix’s frown deepened, “Why tell me then?”

Doras shrugged, “I like you… I am also hoping you may have found a creature or specimen that I might purchase?”

Felix nodded, “You’ll have to ask Orav about the specimens in the storage room, I didn’t catalogue them and there were no records,” Felix kept up the lie, “but I also slew a Leviathan, is that close enough?”

Doras’ eyes widened, “Yes, I- That is- How much?”

Felix chuckled, “I gave the only piece I carved off to Orav. It was a big piece though so I would be surprised if he wasn’t willing to part with a small piece of it. How much do you need?”

Doras shook his head rapidly, “A tiny morsel. The quantity is largely irrelevant.”

Felix cocked his head, “Couldn’t you just buy the corpses of creatures from the city?”

Doras nodded, “I already have standing orders with every reputable corpse dealer in Telviras.”

“No Leviathans pop up in the shops yet?”

“No Legendary creatures at all. Even Epic corpses are exceedingly scarce. Either due to value, rarity or both compounding with each-other.”

Orav’s assistants started to stream out of the storage room and Felix quickly checked the leaderboard to see his point total tick up the last few thousand to just over 370 million placing him just barely in second place. Though Felix didn’t care about the prizes themselves, it was immensely satisfying for him to watch Merric get pushed to fourth.

Orav reluctantly stepped through the portal and after a quick conversation with Doras and Felix, agreed to provide Doras with a small sample of the Leviathan’s flesh. Felix had though about replicating it’s flesh on his own body then severing it and providing it to Doras himself but unfortunately, that would require him to switch bodies. He decided it wasn’t worth it and Doras already seemed elated with the small sliver Orav offered him.

Orav quickly flicked through some screens then nodded to the two of them, “It seems as though you two are in first and second place. I will go announce the winners and call Arvum in then you may claim your prizes.”

The small frostmyre man disappeared through the only exterior door in the building Felix was aware of, leaving the two of them and Nova with a small army of his assistants. The assistants were in the process of sorting through the warehouse and paid them no mind.

Felix had already seen the prizes himself so he started wandering over towards them. Doras followed and they spoke about each-other’s professions along the way. Doras’ profession was a variant of gardener or botanist though his explanation left Felix with more questions rather than a clear idea.

They simply waited at the door to the office until Orav hurried over with a spectacled elf in tow.

[D] Arvum (Lvl 426)

The elf wore mostly leather armor but the way he walked, Felix wasn’t sure he had ever seen combat at all. He was meek and his gait timid, in an insecure way.

Felix stared him down trying to figure out how he was in third place but quickly stopped when he realized he was scaring them.

Orav opened up the door to his office and led them over to the display cases where Doras had first pick. Felix stood back and saw, out of the corner of his eye, Arvum staring at the leather armor that enhanced all stealth skills, except Felix’s Reaper skills.

Doras looked over each item for just a few seconds before taking the wand. Felix had the next pick and he had no interest in any of the items at all.

To try and help him decide, he turned to Orav, “Do you know which of these is worth the most?”

Orav shrugged, “It’s all about the same. Wand was probably the most but when I briefly considered selling these to pay my way through schooling, they were all appraised within 5% of each-other or so except the wand was maybe 20% higher than that?”

Felix nodded and just picked the hat. It was the only item he could actually use so on the minute chance he didn’t sell it, he would at least have something usable, even if it did nothing other than change it’s look. For the time being, he stowed it in his soul space.

Arvum didn’t even look at the other items and immediately grabbed the leather armor as soon as Felix touched the hat.

Orav nodded to them, “Thank you for performing so admirably. Some of my assistants are distributing credits to the rest of the participants as we speak. If you would like, I can do that for you three now.”

Felix and Doras nodded while Arvum continued to examine the leather armor with awe.

Orav opened up transfer screens with each of them and Felix immediately accepted. The conversion rate was that each point was equal to 1000 E or a thousand points was equal to 1 D. Felix ended up with just over 370 thousand D. It didn’t really change his net worth by much considering the absurd sum Shade’s Wrath had paid him, but he wasn’t here to make money anyways. On the other hand, compared to how much Thezan thought was standard for a job, Felix had made a lot of money in a short period.

Felix had gotten more than he had even hoped for with all the creatures he had slain. Though, he hadn’t dissected and integrated the Phoenix and other specimens he had taken for himself yet. Once he had, he would start focusing on other areas of improvement.

His next biggest goal was to figure out a way of enhancing his mind. Though Grim had come across some mentions in the books Felix had scanned in the library, there was nothing promising. All the mentions involved targeting your racial evolution or using elixirs. Felix was interested in specific biological changes.

Unfortunately, they found almost nothing on the subject anywhere. Most people were satisfied with their brains and if they needed to do something more complex, they referred to tools like mana computers. Even searching through bestiaries, they didn’t find any promising creatures for Felix to dissect and integrate.

Unfortunately this left Felix with direction but no guidance. He already knew anima could be used to store memories. He planned on finding a way of using that but he had no previous experiments or research at his disposal to start from. On top of that, he couldn’t use his Persona as a testing ground because it didn’t really have its own mind.

He briefly considered capturing and experimenting on creatures but realized it wouldn’t realistically do much because he was dealing with anima. It would be nearly impossible for him to cultivate a creature’s soul for it.

Felix felt a tap on his shoulder that broke him out of his cogitation.

Doras stood just in front of him and smiled, “Arthur, it was a pleasure to meet you. I hope our paths cross some time again in the future. Maybe you could even consider joining the order of The Holy Mother.”

Felix smiled, “Maybe.”

Doras nodded, “And your familiar, she is truly something special. You are lucky to have such a friend.”

Felix patted Nova’s head, “They’re pretty great.”

Doras frowned, “Is Wolfy not a she?”

Felix shrugged, “Wolfy was a sprite now a spirit. Not sure they understand sex or gender for that matter.”

Doras’ frown deepened, “You may want to ask her about this. When I asked she seemed to have a clear preference.”

Felix looked down at Nova and tried to convey the idea of which they preferred, being referred to as she or he. Their response was rather surprising to Felix. She preferred she and the way Nova conveyed it to him, was through a series of memories. She showed some him memories he had never seen before of her fighting the Devoured with Amani in the world event. Of conversations between him and Amani where Amani referred to Nova as she.

Finally he saw her hunting with Endycor, though he wasn’t entirely sure the relevance of those memories because he didn’t actually speak Dragon and the memories didn’t seem romantic or sexual at all. He got the general vibe from Nova who seemed to somewhat understand infant Dragon speak and who seemed convinced Endycor saw her as a she.

Along with all the memories, Felix felt a fondness from Nova. A sense of friendship and slight loss. She was never going to see them again and it seemed she had been, and was fond of them both.

Felix looked up at Doras, “It seems you were right. I appreciate you taking care of her throughout the event.”

Doras chuckled, “She did not need me to take care of her. But nevertheless, it was my pleasure.”

Doras nodded then walked through a portal of glowing light that closed shortly afterwards.

Felix and Nova followed Orav and Arvum out of the temporary office and the warehouse into the field. Felix immediately noticed that at least half of the participants had already left.

Orav closed the door behind him and Felix pulled out the portal mold and started pointing it towards Telviras, then changed his mind. He opened a portal into the under-coral where he had memorized the coordinates. As he walked through, he caught sight of Arvum calling over a massive vehicle that looked like it was intended for cargo. In the vehicle, he had countless objects that looked like turrets and bots.

That is how they are in second and still seem like they’ve never actually fought anything themselves, because they haven’t. They’re worse than Martin.

He closed the portal and recharged his mana pool while Nova ran from pool to pool drinking the liquid and eating the plants and crystals. He was going to open a portal back to Telviras immediately but decided to give Nova some time.

He instead opened his Pocket Home against one of the coral pillars and stepped inside. He quickly checked on the sapling which had already grown it’s roots around the crystals and into the sea beneath it as well as into the stone around it.

Felix was just happy to see that it was alive so he headed to an empty area of the stone ground and sat down. He entered his soul garden first and found Grim standing against the side of a tree, once again reading a book.

Felix stretched out in the projection of his own body to get used to it as he spoke, “I’ve been thinking about the records in that testing facility.”

Grim closed his book and nodded, “You mean the fact that someone had been there before you but left everything behind?”

Felix nodded, “We don’t know that they left everything but they certainly didn’t take everything of value.”

Grim nodded, “Definitely odd. It’s always possible it was a god or the servant of one and the information just wasn’t valuable to them.”

Felix squinted his eyes a little, “Still, this information doesn’t exist in the Telviras library. I feel like it’s fair to assume it doesn’t exist publicly anywhere in that case. That means even if you don’t have value for the information yourself, you could probably license or sell it, right? Then it would be far more valuable if you destroyed it.”

Grim cocked his head, “That’s true. Just because the information wasn’t valuable to them, doesn’t mean it wasn’t valuable at all. It’s also not like they didn’t want the information to get out because it was ethically problematic, it’s not like they burned and destroyed it all. Maybe they were just looking for something in specific but… it still makes more sense to sell, license or destroy the information. Unless it is public just somewhere else? So it wasn’t worth it?”

Felix frowned, “How thorough are the notes?”

“You could replicate the surgeries almost perfectly if you so desired. As far as I can tell, everything is in there. There is also a ton of information on various beasts, their organs and mana in general. Nothing you don’t already know though.”

Felix looked up at the sky, “Makes you wonder how much information is out there that either someone decided wasn’t useful, actually got destroyed, or is private and only distributed to a specific faction. Not that I’m in any place to judge, that’s probably what I would have ended up doing with the Vault in Atalus. I don’t even mind paying for the information but if it’s held by a faction, I would probably have to soul bind myself to ensure my allegiance or something, like Doras. I am definitely not doing that.”

Grim nodded, “Yeah. Unfortunately, I’d bet you spells are some of the information that is most commonly sold, licensed or just kept secret.”

Felix sighed, “Yeah. That and classes, skills, professions since apparently you can license those if you created them.”

Grim frowned which just involved the arcane symbols on his book cover to twist and contort, “It seems odd to me that The System… not only allows licensing of skills and classes but enables it. It’s basically encouragement at that point.”

Felix shrugged, “Why?”

Grim sighed, “It’s just incongruous with how I think of The System I guess.”

“The more we learn about The System, the more I lean towards going around it as much as possible. It’s just too odd. Having it automate skills for me is nice. I haven’t really leveraged Quill Precision to do something I couldn’t have before but I like the idea of skills like that. On the other hand, I don’t really want to be locked into The System’s choices for race. Harvesting souls, I’m essentially going around The System’s natural leveling and dealing with my soul myself.”

Grim nodded, “You haven’t beaten The System options yet in terms of raw stats, but you’re getting much closer. As soon as you upgrade your own soul and suffuse your body, just like you did the Persona…”

Felix nodded, “Yeah and if I can figure out the whole mind upgrade thing it might also grant me a ton of stats.”

Grim nodded again, “You should probably also look into making your soul harvesting more efficient. I’m sure it’s possible though suffusing your body might help with that too.”

Felix nodded in agreement, “You’re right, it is kind of falling behind. I should also find another job, at least before I head to Eramith, to harvest a bunch more. Did you find anything useful on the topic of enhancing my mind?”

Grim sighed, “No. Nothing promising. I still think your previous direction or idea about using your soul somehow is probably the way to go.”

Felix nodded, “Alright. I guess I should probably start testing that then so we can iron out the kinks. What about the experiment logs, anything useful in there for upgrading my body?”

Grim shrugged, “Not really. A lot of the experiments were heavy handed. The only thing is be cautious when you integrate things. Make sure the cells are compatible. I nor the notes know why all the patients went insane but you seem to be fine for now so…”

Felix questioned Grim on some of the specifics of the phoenix and the other specimens he had taken just so he could get more background. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the notes were heavily focused on integrating the organs into the body so that they were controlled from the same nervous system.

Both Grim and Felix suspected that might have played a role in the patients going insane. Luckily Felix didn’t need and had no intention of doing that. He had the unique advantage of having a matter spirit as his familiar and having a race, or in the case of his Persona the blood ring, that allowed him to properly integrate the organs.

Instead of implanting them or growing them within his body using stem cells, Felix could modify the organ’s cells along with his own and control the cells on a more granular level. He was just hoping it was all enough to keep himself from going insane.

He shifted his consciousness over to his soul space and started examining the specimens as non destructively as he could. The specimen he was most interested in and spent the most time examining was the Phoenix wing. There were also some other creatures that seemed to have unique bones, muscles, organs, skin, eyes, ears, nose and tongue.

Though he hadn’t thought of it himself, Felix was very grateful that Grim had thought to preserve specimens with more acute senses. There were 4 specimens with unique eyes, most of which were literally eyeballs that had been surgically removed.

One of them could see much farther than Felix’s standard eyes could, a nice improvement that he was happy to integrate. The next eye specimen he had was simply faster in the sense that he could switch from focusing on something close to him to something further away much faster.

He also had one that would react to changes in light much faster and had a buffer in a sense that could deal with quick flashes of bright light, making sure he wasn’t momentarily blinded. Lastly and, for Felix, the most interesting, was an eye that could see a much larger spectrum of colors and was more sensitive in general to colors.

While they were all interesting and from his initial examination, not difficult to integrate, Felix had no idea how to combine them all together. He suspected Erolan had reached a similar point but without Felix’s cell level control of his own body, likely just added eyes to his own head resulting in his 5 distinct eyes.

Felix alternated through the eyes, integrating them into his Persona then testing and tuning them individually so he had a better idea of how they worked. They all seemed to require him to supply them with mana so he simply did so manually for the time being.

He marveled at how he could focus in on Nova gnawing on a crystal formation and lapping up a colorful pond far off in the distance all the way through the open portal of his Pocket Home.

He switched over to the fast eyes and could make out just a blur. He did however, immediately notice a difference in focusing speed of his eyes. He hadn’t noticed any issues before but now, he could immediately tell there was a brief delay when his normal eyes looked at something where they snapped into focus. With these, it felt like the lag was gone or just significantly smaller.

He briefly tested the light reactive eyes and manually dilated his pupils, allowing him to see more in his Pocket Home and the dark under-coral but not by much. He disabled the light a top the tower in his Pocket Home and tested it then but there wasn’t much to see. He was allowing more light into his eyes but there wasn’t much light there in the first place.

Lastly, Felix tested the eyes that allowed him to see more colors. It took a few minutes for the headache to pass and his brain to adjust but when it did, he felt a little underwhelmed. He reactivated the light a top his tower though and immediately felt differently.

Looking at the stone of the ground below alone, it was no longer a small, uniform range of grey and brown. Now, he saw all these minerals and reflections all over the stone almost like someone had sprinkled it with sparkles. The mana liquid was more colorful as well with more distinction between the different shades.

Instead of just a ruddy pool, he saw a pool of various shades of red intermingling and swirling together.

Looking around, both inside his Pocket Home and out the portal he had left open into the under-coral, Felix found everything a little too vibrant and varied. It was like a drawing of a fantasy land with too many colors. He suspected he would adjust over time but his initial impression was that he was suddenly looking at a color vomit candy land all around him.

Objects that used to be a single color or even ones that used to be black or grey were now either a whole range of shades or a mess of other colors. On the flip side, when he looked off into the distance where it was dark, he could vaguely see the infrared that was generated from the natural heat of a creature. He effectively had heat vision though it was unfiltered and so it was somewhat useless in any environment that wasn’t already very dark.

From there, Felix started to try and combine the effects of the eyes together. Luckily, it seemed like most of the difference between them were focused on different areas of the eye. While the fast and far seeing eyes had the most differences in the lens and cornea, the light reactive eyes were focused on the iris and the muscles within and around it. The last eye, the color vomit one had a more complicated retina which had more variety of cells.

The issue was that the differences were focused on a specific part but not isolated. The retina of the far and fast seeing eyes were also packed much denser. The light reactive eyes had a protective layer of cells over the retina that helped deal with bright flashes.

He could have simply pieced together all the different pieces of the eyes and created a chimera like eye but he decided against that. Instead, he worked on combining them as much as he could. He started by combining all of them in pairs then gradually adding in a third to the pair.

It took him a few hours of dilated time working through the kinks in his soul space followed by testing and iterating in the real world to end up with something he was happy with. He managed to maximize the effects while not deforming the shape of his eye and keeping his pupils circular but he unfortunately couldn’t maintain the color of his iris.

The final design he ended up growing into his Persona were still blue but were slightly more vibrant and brighter with specs of purple. It wasn’t a huge change from his normal body’s eye color, which was the goal, but it was noticeable. Some would have considered them pretty but he just found the new color gaudy and out of place.

After that he repeated the process with the two ear specimens. One of them was simply very sensitive without sacrificing resiliency. The other had a wider range of hearing and allowed him to manually tune out the top or bottom end of his hearing. In theory, he could have simply physically turned off his ability to hear the scream of Subject #2.

Combining the two had more to do with the structure of the bones in his ears than the cells themselves but it still took him some time.

He only had one specimen to replace his nose and tongue so he simply took the time to fit them into his body and cells.

The two samples he had for his bones were completely separate, one with denser and more capable marrow that used mana to increase his vitality and immune system. The other had a different structure for the compact bone which he use alongside the modified minotaur cells he had already integrated.

There were a couple organs that he looked through but none that he integrated just yet. They were simply stronger versions of his own that were fueled both with some mana alongside energy.

Moving onto the muscle specimens, he actually got excited. The muscles he had were from some ape like creature that simply used mana alongside energy to fuel their muscles. He carefully modified Damoth’s muscles that he had already integrated and combined the two. Now it would take much longer for him to blow through his energy pool because he was using mana to partially fuel his muscles.

Testing them, they weren’t efficient by any means but he figured he had at least doubled the time he could use his new muscles and that was without considering his energy regeneration.

One of the more interesting specimens that Felix never would have thought of on his own made his nails stronger. They grew significantly slower as a result but that wasn’t a concern to him when he could simply force his cells to grow them faster if he needed to.

He also combined the Aucore cells with a skin specimen and ended up with something he was much happier with. Now, instead of becoming completely solid, his skin would become harder but also have some elasticity along with a cushioning effect. In theory that would make it so he didn’t kill himself.

He tested it by smashing boulders into himself with spells using his arm to block them with his skin hardened. He spent some time tuning it until he was satisfied with the balance between protection and safety.

Lastly, he turned his attention to the most exciting specimen, the phoenix. He started by examining the bodies of Test Subjects #4 and #7. Subject #7, as confirmed by Grim and the records in the lab, had phoenix organs and cells in them. Subject #4 just simply reminded Felix of #7 and had a similar effect.

He also had the phoenix wing itself to compare against which made it much easier for him to separate what the scientists had done from the actual cells.

First, he wanted to simply see how it worked so he tried to just replicate the cells for the wing. Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to do it. At first, his attempts to replicate it resulted in mush. He couldn’t seem to replicate the cells at all for whatever reason.

He started troubleshooting until he realized he didn’t actually have the base materials to make the cells at all. When he created cells in The Blood Ring and his body, he wasn’t actually creating or changing any chemical compounds, nothing at the atomic level. He was simply piecing together different parts of cells.

With the Phoenix cells, he was missing so much of it, that he couldn’t even create functioning cells at all.

He wasn’t sure how to go about finding the components he needed, but apparently Grim did, You could get Nova to recreate them for you.

Wait, really? I didn’t realize she was manipulating things on the atomic level.

Yeah pretty early on but not quickly. Normally they can’t really manipulate energy, mana and on a macro level, their control of their own body suffers.

What do you mean?

Turning into an animal for example. Moving legs, arms, coordinating it all.

Nova hasn’t had any issue with that though?

Neither do most sprites as soon as they bond with a sapient humanoid.

I see. For Nova specifically, her mana control also isn’t terrible.

Correct.

You think I have any amount of control over matter yet?

We can test it out later but I suspect by the end of D grade, if you practice, you might be able to fly without any spells. Maybe not quickly or with any significant force, but maybe.

Only because my control over the matter in my body is going to be higher, right? I couldn’t lift another person?

Correct. Your precision is going to be abysmal too.

Does Nova do that now?

Remember her eating the Demitium?

Oh right.

Felix briefly dissected and separated out small pieces of the Phoenix wing making sure he had a small piece of every cell using cells from Test Subject #4 wherever possible. He tugged on his soul bond with Nova and felt them rocket towards him at a ridiculous speed.

With his new eyes, he was able to see them pop out from behind a coral pillar way off in the distance then bound across the ground, pillars, plants and the air itself. Felix was scared for a second they would smack into him or the tower and started preparing spells but they decelerated as soon as they passed through the portal.

Nova stopped right in front of him, a black Dire Wolf who’s head reached a couple meters off the ground.

Felix pulled out the cells he had isolated and handed them to Nova who happily sucked them into her soul space. Before Felix had a chance to communicate what he wanted though, Nova sent him a few images of them eating his body.

He was concerned for a few seconds until he figured out what they wanted. Nova could see all the different cells on his body that he had integrated. Instead of letting them just gnaw on him a little, he told them to wait a minute.

He quickly isolated as many unique cells as he could and severed a small section of his flesh and fed it to Nova who was elated.

After that they were very receptive and when Felix communicated that he wanted Nova to reproduce the cells he had first given them, they seemed confused. They didn’t refuse though and instead, Nova leapt out of his Pocket Home and started sucking in massive chunks of the coral pillars and ground.

They looked like a vacuum cleaner that sucked up everything, regardless of whether or not it was tied down. Like a black hole, they simply removed large chunks of everything.

Felix was astonished at how much they consumed but they just kept going. After almost a half hour of this, they hopped back over to Felix’s feet and communicated to him that it was going to take a little bit of time then started napping.

In the meantime, Felix started testing the abilities he had gotten from Nova, to move matter. He started with a pebble that he held in his hands and simply tried to lift it up a little bit. He had no frame of reference for what the feeling was like so he simply focused and imagined it. He pushed his will as much as he could but it just wasn’t moving.

He tried picturing it moving, relaxing, straining and focusing until finally, he got frustrated and the pebble suddenly shot out of his hand smacking into the edge of the pocket universe. If he hadn’t felt the burst of mana coming from his own mana core, he would have thought he had finally gotten it.

What the fuck.

Remember when you were fighting Damoth?

Those were spells though, right? I felt the mana.

I don’t know what they were, don’t ask me.

Fuck.

Felix retrieved another pebble and tried to replicate the feat but just couldn’t. He eventually gave up and went back to figuring out the Nova bond powers he should have by now. In order to figure out how it felt, he briefly woke Nova up and had them lift the pebble into the air.

They shrugged and complied though were very confused. While they circled the pebble in the air in front of them, Felix fully tuned into their soul bond and let their feelings, emotions and experience wash over him.

He was immediately bombarded with all kinds of senses he wasn’t used to and some he had never experienced at all. He felt things in and around his body that he didn’t actually feel but were being passed along from Nova. He felt hunger that was mostly sated but ever present and felt her willpower fighting against it.

Most of all though, he felt matter itself. He could feel everything around Nova. All the air, ground and Felix himself. It was all there as a sense in the same way he felt mana all around him at all times.

It took him a few minutes to process everything and despite the head ache, isolate the feeling of Nova moving the pebble. Instead of anything he had tried, it felt just different. He wasn’t sure he ever would have figured it out on his own. It was like when he first learned to sense mana. He just needed any idea of what to look for.

Tuning their soul bond out again, Felix returned to his own body and let Nova go back to napping. He caught the pebble from the air and held it in his hand then just focused on feeling it.

It took him almost an hour of staring at it before he felt a small spec of a brand new sense waking itself up. He couldn’t discern the stone’s composition, weight, or even it’s shape. He could however, feel a fuzzy blur in his palm, and that was more than he had felt before.

He continued to hone the senses for another hour or so until Nova finally woke up. Unfortunately, he hadn’t really gotten any further than a fuzzy feeling.

Nova immediately hopped up to their feet and vomited out a completely dry chunk of flesh that was almost as big as Felix was. It looked like a ball of flesh and it was completely disgusting in a body horror way. Felix didn’t mind at all though and excitedly stuck it in The Blood Ring.

Before he could go back to trying to integrate the phoenix cells, Nova approached Felix and asked him a question through their soul bond. It took them a bit of back and forth for Felix to realize what they wanted but he eventually figured it out.

He did his best to imagine what a phoenix might look like, considering the movement of Test Subject #4 he suspected they weren’t actually on fire all the time. Grim stopped him short because though he had never actually seen one himself, he had seen a picture of them in one of the bestiaries Felix had scanned.

Felix quickly pulled up the memory and saw a beautiful bird that was no bigger than an eagle. It had an angular, trapezoidal beak and a mane of long colorful feathers that matched the feathers on it’s tail. It’s body was slim and covered in sharp looking feathers that were mostly blue some red feathers along the edges of it’s wings and neck.

Felix pushed the image through to Nova as best he could through their soul bond and he watched as they morphed themselves on the spot to fit the image. He had provided feedback and helped them adjust as soul bonds weren’t ideal for communicating detailed images. Eventually though, Nova managed to get themselves to perfectly match the image as far as Felix could tell.

Nova happily flew around the Pocket Home for a bit but didn’t eat anything despite the desire Felix felt from their soul bond when they sniffed at the sapling. Nova resisted though and happily bounded over to the Demitium chunk where they continued eating it.

Inside The Blood Ring, Felix replicated the wing as accurately as he could and simply attached it to his back. Unlike all the other cells he had integrated recently, the phoenix wing wasn’t fueled by energy at all, it exclusively used mana. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem particularly strong by itself.

Felix got used to the additional limb as he flapped it around and even forced it to grow feathers which were not in fact blue but rather a light purple.

Finally, he fed it a burst of mana and launched himself into the edge of the pocket dimension with a massive explosion of fire. The outside was squishy and absorbed a lot of the impact but he still broke his own neck. He fell to the ground then waited until he regained full control of his body as his neck healed.

Nova immediately flew over and Felix was touched that they were worried about him until he realized all he felt through their soul bond was curiosity at what he was doing. They poked at the wing on his back while he healed and demanded an explanation which he did his best to provide.

Once they were satisfied, they flew off into the under-coral and started eating the ground again.

Felix ignored them for now and turned his attention towards his back. Though he had only intended to supply a couple thousand mana, it seemed as though phoenixes didn’t pump mana to their wings but rather, the wings pulled mana out of their core.

Looking at his pool which The System kindly estimated for him, he had actually spent almost a quarter million mana. After that, he spent a few hours trying to find a way to control how much mana he spent. At first, he simply manually held back the mana with his mana control.

Unfortunately, in a fight if he wasn’t able to focus on it, he didn’t want to have any potential to kill himself. He messed with the cells until he finally found a specific set of muscles that contracted to shrink the mana channels in the wing. He carefully took control of those nerves manually with his soul and limited control over his body and forced them to shrink.

This time, he leapt into the air with a small burst of fire but didn’t hit the edge of his pocket universe and instead fell back down gracefully with a simple Feather Fall. He had only consumed a couple thousand mana and was very happy with the result.

The next step for him was incorporating it all into his muscles so that he could augment any movement with the same effect. Luckily, Test Subject #4 was a great starting point for Felix.

He spent the most time trying to combine both Damoth’s muscles with the mana fueled ones with the phoenix cells. He didn’t want to always use the phoenix cells and wanted the option to use his body normally and not be weak. The phoenix cells, when they weren’t producing bursts of fire, were rather weak. Since he didn’t want to be trailing fire everywhere he went, he needed something in between.

He also looked into Test Subject #7’s muscles which seemed to be a variation of the Phoenix cells in Test Subject #4. According to Grim, #7 was an attempt to replicate #4 which was the lab’s greatest accomplishment that they never quite managed to replicate or improve on.

#7’s muscles relied on Lightning adjacent attunements and seemed to increase Agility more than Strength.

What he ended up with was a hybrid approach that he was ultimately pretty happy with. He twisted all the muscles together in a way where the cells were mostly separate but relied on each-other to a certain degree. He was giving up almost 20% of his raw Strength in favor of doubling his Strength when he pumped mana into his cells. That 20% was easily made up though from the fact that he used more mana instead of just energy. He could now push the muscles harder without worrying about exhausting himself.

Unfortunately, he was also convinced he would never move these muscles over to his real body, they just weren’t clean or elegant enough. If he found a way to remove the Fire and just use mana to generate Force, he would consider it though.

He still hadn’t created mana channels yet but he figured he needed more time to design them. Now that he had more organs and parts of his body that required mana, he had plenty of requirements he could rely on to direct his design. He figured he would spend some free time on it back in Telviras.

Felix briefly waited for Nova to finish gallivanting around the under-coral while training his matter senses. Once they were done, he closed the door to his Pocket Home, had Nova revert to a Dire Wolf and opened a portal back to Telviras.

He presented his Persona’s registration, which wasn’t readable in his soul space, and flew off towards Inscripticae. Instead of heading for the entrance though, he instead flew down into the parking area beneath the building and opened his Pocket Home against a wall. He stepped inside with Nova and close the portal.

Nova immediately reverted to their cat form when given permission and returned to eating the Demitium chunk. Felix reverted to his own body as well and checked on the sapling and everything else just to be sure before he left.

Lastly, as he was walking towards the edge to open the exit, he quickly looked back and identified Nova.

[D - Cursed] Nova, Ravenous Matter Spirit (Lvl 467)

Felix chuckled when he realized his familiar was still surpassing him in level then opened the door and left. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .