The next thing he planned on checking out was the main city of the Integrateds on this planet. It was relatively close to his vault and he figured they might either have useful information or would possibly be willing to buy things from him. He also held out a hint of worry that they may have been humans from earth, Possibly Orselle judging from the surroundings.

Though it was a fair distance away, using Erevos made the journey much more bearable. It only took him a grand total of 5 minutes which wasn’t nearly enough time for the desert heat to bother him in any way.

Seeing it on his map, Felix knew the city was just a short distance away so he dismissed Erevos and flew the rest of the way. He didn’t want to fly in so quickly on Erevos just because if it was his city on Trenus, he would have been wary of someone flying as fast as he was in the vehicle he had.

After a minute of flying himself, Felix spotted an expansive city made mostly of sandstone that seemed to have been built on top of an oasis. The majority of the buildings were small blocks only a few stories high but those just made up the area between the real monuments that defined the city. There were also wide and flat roads throughout but those as well just seemed to lead from one monument to another and provide passage across the lush pools of flowing water.

As Felix approached, he was able to identify massive statues of humanoid creatures with fox like faces and tall ears. There were also massive pyramids with their tips severed and floating a few meters above them. Pillars hovered off the ground and lined the streets coming to a point at the top but Felix had no idea what they did.

The biggest structure of all though, was a massive white structure that had weird trapezoidal angles forming its walls. From the sky though, its footprint was an entirely mundane square. Right in the middle of each wall there was a circular hole that was entirely dark within.

As Felix approached the city, the hole began to brighten. A blue glow spread out and grey into a blinding light as Felix couldn’t help himself but chuckle.

I never realized how far I could sense mana but apparently, a few kilometers is the answer. At least, when somewhere in the realm of hundreds of billions of points are being gathered I can sense it from this distance.

It wasn’t just the core building at the center of the city either, each of the pilons along with the pillars floating through the city all thrummed to life taking on their own, unique function.

The pilons seemed to work together to form a ward that Felix saw shimmer every time it blocked particles of sand blowing by. The pyramids on the other hand, hid massive spell cannons within their floating tips that made themselves known as he approached. Lastly the statues, laid visually dormant but Felix could tell mana was pooling into them nonetheless.

To make himself as non threatening as possible, Felix raised both hands and dropped to the ground, walking for the last kilometer. Initially he wasn’t sure if there was any reason for him to visit the city at all. After seeing their massive spell cannons and the amount of mana they wielded though, his mind was quickly changed.

Peeking out of the pyramid tips, the spell cannons remained ever trained on Felix’s form as he trudged over the dunes. He stopped a half kilometer away when he caught sight of a boat like vehicle surfing the sand in his direction.

Just to be safe, Felix quickly prepared some defensive and mobility spells but left Grim in his Soul Space for the time being.

The short and wide boat-almost resembled like a large surfboard with rails around the outside-skidded to a stop just a few meters from Felix as no more than a dozen levelers hopped off and surrounded him.

Similar to the statues Felix had seen, these levelers were humanoid with two fingers and a thumb on each hand. Their faces had pointed fox or cat like snouts with tall pointed ears and they were all covered in short white fur. Their clothes also left their chest, arms and head exposed and considering the uniformity, Felix assumed they were either uniforms or culturally significant.

The one that approached Felix, the one with two heavily curved-almost hooked-blades on their hips, seemed to be the highest level of the bunch.

[C] Rakyt (Lvl 1392)

In a serious tone carried by an odd accent and a deep voice, the Rakyt examined Felix with their fingers tracing the pommels of their blades, “Who are you? Why have you come here?”

Felix waved, “Hello. I’m Felix, I’m from the multiverse. Participant in this Integration Event. I came to… check out your city I guess?” Felix shrugged.

“Why?”

“Cause it was close by and I figured why not.”

Also cause I was worried it was a city from Trenus.

The Rakyt looked to the others, their slit eyes squinting slightly before they looked back at Felix, “You will come with us.”

Felix nodded to indicate his willingness then followed them into their sand surfing contraption. Every step he took was matched by no fewer than 8 Rakyt surrounding him from every side. He didn’t mind and completely understood the reasoning. Either way, his instincts didn’t scream at him that these levelers were particularly strong. At least, his sense of their threat was nothing compared to the feeling he got from some of the other monsters he had met, like Adaline.

Approaching the edge of the city, large stone gates slid upwards just high enough for their boat to enter and Felix was escorted off and into a nearby building.

He was told to wait and the entourage of 8 guards remained with him. While he waited, Felix examined all the mana structures he had mapped out on the sand ship. He found that while they weren’t astounding or awe inspiring like Erevos was, they were impressive nonetheless, especially for an Integrated city. They also employed plenty of techniques that he didn’t know himself meaning there was a lot he could get out of examining them.

After just a few minutes of waiting, Felix was escorted down the wide road just behind the gates of the city towards the large white structure at the center of everything. To either side of him, Felix saw pools of lush water with hints of greenery right on the banks. Other than that, everything else seemed rather normal to him, like a desert from earth.

There was a market down one street, buildings with clothes hung out the windows, people milling about in various outfits, carrying various tools and moving at various speeds.

He wasn’t allowed to look for long anything though as he was rushed down the road, seemingly for the sake of others seeing him more than him seeing the city. They mostly avoided crowds and the guards occasionally moved to block the sight of particularly nosy onlookers but the entire time the guards mostly ignored Felix so long as he stayed in the center of them.

Heading into the central building of the city, Felix was led into an unexpectedly tight hallway that seemed almost labyrinthian as he followed it. Eventually though, they came to a stop in a large open room in the center of the building.

Felix knew it was the center because in the middle of the room, way up near the ceiling, was the large glowing object that was constructed from massive amounts of mana when he had flown towards the city. Ignoring the massive glowing ball that looked like a fusion reaction ready to burst, the room otherwise looked almost like a holy place.

On the opposite wall from Felix there was a waterfall that calmly ran down the stone wall and benches around the pool it fed. Sitting, standing and kneeling all over the place were Rakyt that appeared to be either praying or worshipping some unseeable entity.

A Rakyt wearing the only sleeves he had seen in the entire city approached and walked right up to Felix, the closest anyone had gotten so far. Despite their sleeves, the robe they wore was left open at the front to expose their chest much like the rest of their population.

[C] Rakyt (Lvl 1683)

“You are from the outside.”

Felix didn’t bother answering as her tone was completely factual and he was the only human anywhere.

“You have come to see our city. What is your judgement?”

Felix looked at her with confusion, “It’s… nice?”

They squinted and stared at him then nodded slightly, “What do you seek in this event?”

“Quests, rewards, levels… knowledge.”

They nodded much faster this time, “What do you do?”

Felix understood this to mean his class, though he wasn’t entirely sure of his interpretation, “I cast spells. Do magic.”

“Your level.”

The hell am I supposed to say to that.

They stared at each-other for a few minutes before they finally spoke again, “It is normal?”

Felix nodded in understanding, “Low. The average from what I’ve seen for the other participants should be about 1300 or so. Limit for the event was 1499.”

They nodded, “Where are you from Felix?”

“I got into this event because I’m a student at Eramith Academy. Before that I was an Integrated like you.”

They frowned at this, clearly in disbelief so Felix activated his title as proof. This seemed to be a bad idea as Felix’s escorts immediately drew their weapons and stared at him warily.

The Rakyt that had approached him took a couple steps back, “You were exiled from your planet. Why?”

Felix sighed, “I was too strong. There was nothing left on the planet to really challenge me, not really. System agreed and gave me a quest to complete, reward was kicking me off the planet.”

The guards seemed to slightly relax at that but their weapons remained drawn. The Rakyt in front of him nodded slowly, “I am Arysha. Are you worthy of faith, Felix?”

Felix’s understanding was that she was asking if they could trust him but, he didn’t have a great answer for her, “Depends what about. I have no immediate intention of slaughtering or stealing from you. I don’t get much out of doing so.”

Except a lot of souls and bodies for my rings but… I’m not quite there yet.

She nodded seemingly accepting of this answer, “You will be the herald of information from the outside, Felix.”

Felix shrugged, “Sure I guess. I’m not going to waste too much time here though so, try to assemble as many questions as you can at once and I’ll get to them when I pass through. I can probably also bring you things… I think. If there’s anything you need from the outside.”

“What things do you speak of?”

Choosing wisely from his Soul Space, Felix withdrew a book he had been holding onto for a different purpose but had kind of forgotten about. Holding Eramith & Edelis: Enchanting Basics out, Felix saw Arysha’s eyes go wide as she reached forwards and snatched the book.

Opening and skimming through it right in front of him, Arysha nodded, “I borrow this. You will have guards with you at all times. We will assemble our questions now and present them in one hour.”

Quest: Friendly Neighbor

The Integrated race in the event, Rakyt, have been allotted a number of Inventory Points they can give out to participants as currency. As a reward for all information and items brought to the Rakyt, you will receive Inventory Points. This is an ongoing quest and will only terminate when the event does or if you fall out of favor with the Rakyt.

Felix nodded and took a seat on one of the benches in the room. Normally, he would have hated waiting around but in this room, there was something he couldn’t explain right above his head and it was either filled or created from mana.

Though it was outside of his normal mana control radius, Felix was still able to examine it somewhat. He was missing a lot of the detail but from what he felt, it seemed like it was more or less just a massive ball of mana. What made it interesting though was how it was created and contained.

All around the orb, Felix could feel hints of massive arrays inscribed within the walls that collected and held the mana stable or at least, as stable as a massive orb of mana could be. The orb visually wasn’t just a sphere, it looked more like a star with loops, flares and what looked like electric arcs pulsing across the surface. It was more than that too though as small spots of color emerged and odd sounds were produced randomly alongside the ever present hum and glow it produced.

After getting everything he could from this range, Felix began paying more attention to the ambient mana and noticed it all being sucked up into the orb. It seemed almost like it wasn’t intentional though, like the orb had a slight gravitational or magnetic pull on the ambient mana. He would have noticed it earlier had the orb not been so attention demanding all by itself.

Finally, he looked into the ambient anima and was almost shocked with how much was happening. The orb was leaking something he couldn’t quite decipher, the people praying each produced a whisper that dissipated into the ambient and finally the room itself was calming the ambient anima. Some kind of enchantment in the walls was cleansing the anima and Felix had never seen nor heard of anything quite like it.

The only nodes he knew of that affected the ambient anima were wards that pushed it away.

He didn’t manage to map anything out though as the enchantments were too deep in the wall and he was interrupted before he got too far by the reappearance of Arysha.

Felix had fully been expecting most of the questions he was asked. They mostly consisted of the questions he himself had had when he left his Integration. Gods, Religions, the current state of affairs, the value of currency, transportation, and information on classes, professions and races.

From what he had seen, everyone in the city was a Rakyt despite some of them being in the C grade. He assumed it was a religious or cultural thing which would mean the information they requested on races was intended more for recognizing participants than anything.

It took him a few hours to get through everything and once he was done, he had received 1380 Inventory Points from them. They valued questions differently and Felix didn’t bother haggling much because it wasn’t worth the time for him. Even the points themselves weren’t that valuable but the favor he was gaining with a city that seemed to be built around an enchantment, mana and spell based knowledge event, was more than worth the time he spent.

With that all done, he bid them farewell for the time being as he had a few things he wanted to get done before Group Combat class.

The Rakyt escorted him right to the gates where he jumped into the air and flew off, a cloud of sand exploding at his feet making him feel like a superhero taking flight.

Before getting to any questing though, Felix flew off a short distance before dropping back to the sand and opening a portal to his personal vault. He immediately headed over to the workshop room where he got to work on the dormant construct lying on the floor. Having dissected the one that almost killed him so he could in turn kill it, Felix already knew where some of the soul binding points were.

Referencing the research notes and the blueprint for the construct, he realized there were many more than he had originally thought. There were the standard soul binding points throughout the mechanical body that were outlined in the blueprints, the ones he had seen for himself. There was also a certain amount of biological matter that formed a miniature system to support the biological brain along with a variation of a nervous system. The nervous system and biological matter had natural soul binding points that had been present in whatever creature they were harvested from.

Luckily, with the research notes and blueprint in his hands, the most complicated and time consuming part was creating the soul itself. He didn’t bother with having everything connected to Mark just yet as that required modifications to the inside of the construct but otherwise, he started by replicated the souls living in his mind.

He started with a soul seed that would serve as the core soul for the construct, this one a lot bigger than the souls in his mind right now. From there, he meticulously pieced together a filter he was happy with. He didn’t want to change his own soul too much because that could have unintended consequences but there were some things that he felt he needed to change.

Firstly, Felix dialed down his addiction, fascination and obsession with magic and the inner workings of the universe. He wanted the construct to have some of that so it knew instinctively what was interesting to him in terms of loot but he didn’t want a mage construct, at least not this one.

He dialed up his desire to win and dominate by a fair bit but complemented that with a desire to protect friends and care for people. That one he had to increase by many orders of magnitude and mix in some aspects from other souls because while those instincts were present in Felix, they weren’t exactly his strong suits.

Mirroring what he had added to Mark’s soul, he also added a burning desire to grow, evolve and become better. This one he made sure was wrapped up in the desire to dominate because they were interrelated and complimented each-other well.

Finally, he added something he had never tried before, a conviction. To make things simple though, he just used his own conviction, Unrelenting.

He heavily debated adding something to make the construct obey but ultimately, decided against it for a couple reasons. Firstly, it couldn’t exist without him at the moment. Its core soul would literally be an echo of his own and only existed so long as his did and was awake and aware. Second, the construct was based on a modified version of himself and though he couldn’t be sure, he was fairly confident that if he were a clone, he would be happy to help the original. So long as the requests weren’t too troublesome.

There was nothing he could think of that he would ask the construct that was unreasonable so, he figured it shouldn’t be an issue.

Also, now that he thought about putting himself in its shoes, Felix was the constructs best path to getting stronger. As Felix grew, he could improve it, grow its soul and make it stronger as well.

Satisfied with the core, Felix created two more layers. The first was a massive layer that would suffuse the entire construct body mostly because of the benefits he had obtained from doing the same thing himself. The last layer was a dense shell that served solely as a defensive layer against soul attacks because though the construct’s core soul was an echo of his own, it didn’t have the same immutable quality.

With just a few hours until Group Combat, Felix carefully inserted the soul into the body and bound each and every binding point to the soul. On top of that, he lightly affinized the body’s material to the soul itself and forced a shape upon the second layer so that it would naturally suffuse everything.

The body seemed like it needed time to acclimate and adjust so Felix left it where it was and raced the clock so he didn’t miss class.

Felix ended up arriving in an empty class just a few minutes late.

Damn, they must have all already stepped through the portal.

Feeling a tap on his shoulder, Felix jumped in shock before turning his head and seeing Peace next to him with a small scrap of parchment in hand.

Felix looked over and took the parchment, his eyes wide and he didn’t delay any longer, casting the portal and inserting the coordinates. They both stepped through a few moments later and joined the rest of the class in listening to the latter half of the Adept’s explanation.

“… Anyways, considering the ongoing event-that seems to have eaten half of your compatriots-I debated having this instead be an expedition in there but… the logistics were too complicated. Instead, we’ve combined the 4th and 5th classes and here we are on Thiriothiss Alpha 4. Find yourselves a group of 4 and get going. I’ll be watching everything from here but remember, The System won’t save you here so, don’t die.”

Looking around as the Adept finished up their explanation, Felix chuckled inwardly as he saw even combining two classes together, they were missing students. Considering that fact, he probably shouldn’t have worried so much about being late or even missing the class but he did actually care about his grades so he didn’t just leave.

Felix already knew Peace would group with him and neither of them even bothered confirming, instead they both started looking for stragglers they could add to their group.

He didn’t really know what was going on with The Cult of the Reaper and specifically Peace, why he was hanging around and helping Felix so much and how his class fit into everything. Normally he’d have found it annoying but given how capable, smart and unintrusive Peace was, Felix found he actually liked having him around. Neither of them really ever relied on the other but it gave Felix someone he could trust not to be useless or a complete idiot.

Considering how they fought, Felix looked specifically for trackers, hunters, archers, rogues, and anyone that could act like a tank. Though, it didn’t overly matter because even if they got two other casters or two healers, they could have simply adjusted and worked around their composition, as was the purpose of the class.

They ended up both locking eyes with another pair of students that had grouped up and were equally lacking in numbers. From what he could see, they seemed like an archer and a caster of some kind though, he couldn’t really discern any specifics.

Both pairs nodded at each-other and walked to meet the others in the middle.

The archer was humanoid but their features were off. Their face was shaped too sharply and they had patterns covering their skin that looked almost like either bark or roots. Along with their greenish skin tone and hair that was either was a collection of leaves or just resembled them, Felix figured they were a good pick considering the forest they stood on the edge of.

[C] Lemi (Lvl 1439)

The caster in the robes on the other hand was not humanoid at all. Their face resembled a humans in that they had eyes and it was somewhat taller than it was wide but that was about it. They seemed to be made of some kind of red crystal or stone and floated around instead of walked. Other than that though, Felix didn’t see a mouth, nose, ears, arms, or anything else he would have expected.

[C] Aedur (Lvl 1280)

Lemi nodded at Felix, “I’ve heard of you. You beat an Adept in a duel, right?”

“Caster’s duel, definitely would not have won an actual fight.”

Lemi just shrugged.

A moment later, a mental pulse echoed into Felix’s mind and his interpretation was something along the lines of, “Pleasure. Meeting. Group?”

He somehow instinctually knew the source was the crystal being, Aedur.

Felix nodded in response and looked at Lemi who shrugged and nodded in an apathetic manner.

“I’m a traditional spell caster, Fire Balls, Storms, Beams, Bolts that kind of thing. Peace is a melee fighter who-” Felix turned to Peace, “Will you hurt animals? Beasts?”

Peace shrugged, “If I have to. I’m not a vegetarian but I also don’t… enjoy fighting and killing.”

Felix turned back to the other two and shrugged figuring that was a passable way of conveying Peace’s quirks to them.

Lemi looked a little perturbed but she didn’t say anything or walk away so Felix figured it wasn’t an issue.

Aedur nodded to them, “Heal. Buff. Help.”

Lemi grunted, “Archer, Tracker, Hunter. The usual.”

Felix smiled and tried not to give away the fact that he had missed the entire first bit of the Adept’s explanation, “Great, any chance you can start us off then?”

Lemi sighed deeply as they turned and walked towards the forest. Before following, Felix quickly grabbed the coordinates of their location, something that had become somewhat of a habit for him at this point.

Leaning his head towards Peace and whispering as quietly as he could, “Any idea what it is we’re supposed to be doing?”

Peace pointed towards another group that was standing a few dozen meters away. Felix couldn’t actually hear them but Peace pointed at his ears and briefly encased them in trails of shadow. Felix understood immediately and tried his best to activate Reaper’s Sense. It helped a lot that he could see the actual sound waves due to the skill and focusing on them visually helped him focus on the auditory as well.

Unfortunately, he was still very early on in his training and so he only managed to activate it for brief moments before it slipped from his grasp once again. He did manage to catch some things though, “atural treas… ant to fin… e need t… ongest beas…”

So we’re hunting for natural treasures, got it.

Having a vague idea of what they were doing, Felix had a much better notion of what to look out for. He still didn’t have any of the constructs he was designing finished yet otherwise those would have helped tremendously. Without them, he was stuck with his standard method of flying through the forest or in this case, relying on Lemi.

Peace had other ideas though and as they followed Lemi-from a safe distance away-and entered the forest, Peace nudged Felix and pointed at his eyes as they began to burn with a black shadow flame outline.

He nodded and continued to try and trigger his Reaper’s Sense skill but unfortunately, he still only got flashes. He kept it up though figuring there was probably a reason Peace had told him to do so. He wasn’t able to figure out what that was until over an hour of travel later though.

Initially they had been stealthy, Felix lagging far behind the others because his stealth was severely lacking. It became quickly apparent however that there wasn’t really anything worth hunting in the near vicinity to their starting point and so, they sped up.

They encountered a couple of other teams as they ran through the forest, the first completely ignoring them them and veering away the second, hitting them all with a large spell. While it wouldn’t have hurt them at all-it was simply a slow field-Felix still leapt towards and knocked the spell aside anyways.

They continued running through the trees in hopes of finding something when finally, they started to spot creatures. They didn’t stop running though as the creatures they spotted were too weak for them to bother with. Felix finally realized why Peace had wanted him to maintain the Reaper’s Sense skill though.

In the vicinity of creatures, Felix was able to see something akin to an aura. It was like a color emanating from the creatures getting progressively more diffuse the further from the creature it was. He took a quick detour so he could more closely examine the creatures and figure out what the hell it was and realized, it was the ambient anima.

Looking back at his compatriots, he tuned in as much as he could and was able to just barely see an aura around them too. The difference seemed to be that they were trying to be stealthy, at least that’s what he thought.

He confirmed by asking Peace but he smirked in response, “Not exactly. In my case, yes. In the case of Lemi and Aedur, your effect on the ambient anima is completely drowning any effect their souls have.”

Felix looked at him both surprised and slightly aghast, “Are you saying I’m like a beacon? I’m that easy to find?”

Peace nodded, “Yes, very much so. I can find you nearly anywhere on campus.”

“How do I not be so… loud then?”

“Well, there are two ways. First-the much easier way-you simply consciously tone down the effect you have on the ambient anima.”

Felix nodded, “Okay… let me try.”

Reaching inwards, Felix began to try and minimize how much he affected the ambient anima. He had some notion of how to do so but no matter how hard he tried, he didn’t seem to be doing anything.

He asked Peace each time to confirm since he was more aware of Felix’s effect than Felix himself was but he offered no other guidance.

“Alright maybe not then. It’s not really something I can explain and for some, it’s just impossible. Seems like you’re one of those. The other option, is that you blend in with the ambient anima, make your influence match the anima that already exists around you.”

Felix nodded as they ran, “Okay so like camouflage instead of… well, literally shrinking.”

Peace shrugged, “Sure, I guess.”

Once again, Felix reached inwards but this time, instead of trying to fight his soul, he simply tried to change what it was doing. He immediately felt better about this method, like he was actually getting anywhere instead of accomplishing nothing.

Unfortunately, Peace said the difference was negligible if there was any at all. He continued to work at it for the next few hours but at no point was Peace confident there was an actual difference to be felt.

They passed by a few beasts as they walked, even some that evidently congregated around natural treasures but none of them were deemed strong enough by the group.

As they traveled deeper into the forest though, the monsters around them rapidly increased in strength until they were outleveled by about 20%. Lemi-who had been leading them-stopped and let everyone catch up, “Should we keep going or start spreading out to see if we can find something?”

Aedur simply looked towards the rest of them, either waiting to provide their opinion or not really having one themselves.

Peace looked towards Felix who then turned to Lemi and shrugged, “I say we keep going until we only have an hour or two left. I can simply open a portal back so we don’t need to worry about travel time.”

Lemi scowled, “We can’t go that far. The beasts will become way too strong for us to fight.”

Felix shrugged, “Then we don’t fight. I get this is Group Combat but all that matters is we get the best natural treasure… right?”

The others looked at him with slight confusion except for Peace who was wide eyed and smiling.

Felix clarified for the other two, “Let’s just steal one.”

At first, running through the forest proved a non issue for them, for a few hours. Afterwards, the beasts around them grew strong enough that they were able to keep up with and harass Felix’s team. Lemi and Peace seemed completely capable of avoiding detection but Aedur and Felix definitely were not.

Felix had never really worried about his stealth, except in the undercity of the Trenus World Event, but even what he had learned there didn’t amount to much. On top of him being physically terrible at stealth, it turned out the issues he was facing with his soul were making things even worse.

Beasts ended up harassing and chasing them from all over the forest as they, according to Peace, sensed Felix’s soul. Once they realized that, Felix flew high up into the sky where all he had to dodge were birds and various other flying creatures. The squirrels definitely stood out as the most annoying but none of them were particularly difficult for him to deal with.

Once they decided they had traveled far enough, when the occasional beast began to spot Peace and Lemi despite their impressive stealth, they began searching. It didn’t take very long for them to find a natural treasure. Aedur was actually the one that spotted it, flying alongside Felix.

In a small clearing that was completely covered by reaching canopies from every direction, lay a small white flower. Felix couldn’t tell what it did but once Aedur pointed it out and he focused on it and the area around it, he was shocked he had almost missed it.

The flower itself was surrounded by an aura that his soul senses picked up but even more than that, mana leaked out of the clearing from every direction. The flower itself didn’t produce mana or anything but it seemed to imbue an attunement upon it.

All the mana leaking out of the clearing was a combination of light green and bright golden light to Felix’s mana sight. It was vastly more complicated than any single attunement so Felix couldn’t identify it but he didn’t need to, it was obviously powerful.

Once they had found it, Peace and Lemi immediately split up and ran off into the forest. With them in position, Felix dropped himself near the clearing while Aedur buffed his speed with a channeled haste spell. From a kilometer or so away from the clearing, Felix began loudly smashing through the trees and branches around him.

A few creatures peeked out to see what was happening but none of them got too close. In a forest this dense with creature’s in the high C and low B grades, natural treasures were no longer surrounded.

Instead, creatures were bolder and smarter. They didn’t just loiter around in layers around the treasure, they went about their days and kept tabs on the treasure area, just in case. The creature density was higher around the treasures but it was less obvious where the treasure was.

Seeing how all of the creature’s in the forest were ignoring him, Felix figured he was probably the right distance away. It meant he was inside of their target’s domain but apparently, he just wasn’t threatening or attractive enough.

To fix that problem, Felix began releasing bursts of mana that rippled outwards in all directions all while essentially screaming into the anima. Beasts, unlike sapient levelers, relied on their instincts more than anything. That meant that they were more in tune with their souls and why they were able to pierce Peace’s stealth where no sapient Felix had seen could.

All Felix had to do, was be a little louder.

He had found being quieter nearly impossible as they ran but being louder, that was much easier. It was almost like screaming and releasing pent up emotions, satisfying in a way.

The mana was to make it seem like there was a treasure of some kind. He had debated adding an attunement of some kind but found that was impossible as he wasn’t nearly fast enough at attuning mana given the amount he was releasing.

It took a few minutes but eventually, a hulking four legged beast with no apparent eyes sauntered over from the direction of the clearing.

[B - Special] Dire Steirok (Lvl 2859)

When it saw him, the creature stopped and roared. The roar actually knocked Felix over and shook the trees around him, a few loose branches falling nearby. The Steirok didn’t seem to be interested much in hunting Felix down though, now that it had seen and sensed his level.

It stood and waited for a few moments but when Felix made it clear he had no intention of running, it leapt towards him with ridiculous speed. Despite Felix being buffed by Aedur and being over a hundred meters away from the creature, he was only able to just barely dodge its pounce.

Landing on the ground, heart pounding, Felix looked over and saw the creature simply walking away. It seemed he was too low level for it to care and instead, it was going back to defend the treasure it had found. Whether it planned to eat the flower or simply sleep next to it, Felix couldn’t let it go back so, he began to poke the bear.

Before it slipped through the trees and out of sight, Felix launched an arrow of flame into its backside. The Seirok flinched a little but didn’t even bother turning back around.

Seriously?

Casting the same spell over and over again-because it was the fastest and highest damage Felix had at the moment-the Seirok finally turned back around.

Once again it roared at him so he hit it in the mouth with a flaming arrow. The force of the roar threw the arrow slightly off target and so it was hit in the eye instead but that worked just as well for Felix’s purposes.

Everyone except for Felix apparently, knew that the best way to harvest a natural treasure like a flower was to preserve everything, including the roots. Unfortunately that meant harvesting it would take time. Their best guess was half a minute to a minute at most which meant Felix still had at least 20 seconds of distraction left. Seeing the Dire Seirok leap towards him though, he wasn’t sure he would last 5 seconds, let alone 50 in their estimated worst case.

Felix immediately slammed himself in the chest with an instinct cast so he could avoid-albeit just barely-a swipe of its claw. He dropped a Phantom Step he had prepared then kicked off to the side but the creature managed to sink its teeth into his leg as he did so. There was more than enough momentum carrying Felix for a flick of the creature’s neck to completely remove his leg from the knee down.

That momentum carried him a short distance away where he was prepared to land on one foot but astonishingly, found his other foot had miraculously returned. Looking down, he saw that his leg hadn’t quite grown back but instead, in place of his foot and shin, he had a-familiar looking-red crystalline prosthetic.

Having landed, he had already put weight on it and knew it felt much like his actual leg, at least in terms of basic functionality but more importantly, he wasn’t bleeding out. Typically, he would have expected to lose at least 5% of his health per second from the blood loss alone but now, he had nothing to worry about, his health was perfectly stable. He had still lost over 20% of it but, it wasn’t going down any further.

Cool. Thanks Aedur.

Felix’s speed still suffered and unfortunately, he couldn’t get his Reaper’s Movement to activate in earnest. All he got were the sputterings he always got outside of a fight. He knew that he had no intention of beating this thing and little hope of doing so and so, he wasn’t able to engage the skill at all.

Unfortunately that meant the Serok was significantly faster than Felix was, even with Aedur buffing his speed by about 100%.

Learning from his mistakes, Felix did his best to avoid the swipes and bites of the beast but when he couldn’t, he made sure his cloak was in the way. When it had taken his leg, his cloak had been pulled behind him due to the inertia and his legs became exposed.

This is exactly why I hate loose clothing. Although, I’m definitely not meant to be in melee range with this thing as a caster.

Instead of losing chunks of his health bar, Felix began losing chunks of his mana pool. Given how stupidly high his mana pool was, it wasn’t nearly as problematic. Each swipe took about 700k mana and each bite a little more than that. All he had to do was make sure he had enough mana to get away from it when the job was done. Luckily, he figured he could probably just fly away, assuming he could get far enough, given what he had seen. At least, he didn’t think the Seirok could fly.

Taking an average of three hits per second, Felix continued to distract the Seirok until he got the signal or was forced to leave. Luckily, he didn’t have to wait quite the entire minute as around 50 seconds into the fight, the Seirok was struck in the side by an arrow.

The arrow didn’t even faze the creature but Felix on the other hand, immediately took notice. Releasing a burst of Force in every direction just to gain just distance, Felix simultaneously launched himself upwards.

Glancing down, his burst hadn’t had nearly had the effect he had been hoping for as the Seirok was only pushed back a few meters. As soon as it had hit the ground too, it immediately leapt into the trees, bounding off of them and trying to pull him back down.

The beast repeatedly leaping off the trees was faster than Felix and so he continued to block and repel it as he tried desperately to escape.

Flying out past the top of the trees, the Seirok leapt high up into the air, easily a hundred meters from the nearest tree. Felix hit himself once again with an instinct cast and made sure to spin his body so its bite hit his cloak.

As soon as it did, the creature latched on, Felix’s mana plummeting as it resisted the creature’s immense jaw strength. Luckily, hitting it with a Lightning Bolt to the jaw muscle weakened it just enough for him to slip out of reach.

Felix exhaled in relief then quickly spotted Aedur. He flew over then dropped down into the forest alongside him to meet Peace and Lemi. Before even hitting the ground, Felix had the portal to get back ready.

They could hear the Seirok chasing them down through the forest but the portal closed before they ever saw it again.

Rejoining the Adept, they found most of the students in attendance were already there waiting though, not all of them. Lemi approached the Adept and handed them the flower, well preserved in a translucent container with some soil.

The Adept took the treasure and examined it with a knowing smirk then nodded, “We have to wait for the others still but they aren’t gonna beat this. Well done, deciding to steal the treasure rather than fight at all was a great tactic. Given it was you who came up with it Felix, you’ll be moved into the 3rd class. Pick anyone else from your team that you want to go with you.”

Felix nodded and they walked away from the Adept. Felix looked to Lemi and Aedur and started to explain but Lemi cut him off, “I don’t want to be split from Aedur.”

Felix nodded, “That makes this easier then. Thanks.”

They nodded and Aedur helped him regenerate his real leg as the rest of the students rejoined them. Felix saw a couple of teams go from proud expressions or confidence to complete disappointment when the Adept informed them their treasure wasn’t good enough.

Before the class was over, Felix turned to his own team, “So what is the flower anyways?”

“It’s a healing treasure. Either you eat it and it gives you some minor regeneration buff for a while or you prepare it alchemically into a resin or a potion or something. Applied to say, a staff or wand, you could get a buff to all healing spells.”

Felix’s brow furrowed, “Wait, really? How the hell does that work?”

Lemi shrugged, “I don’t know, go ask an alchemist or specialty item crafter.”

Peace tilted his head slightly, “More likely you would need to find someone who researches treasures. Most alchemists and item crafters just follow recipes. They lose out on some of the potential but not enough to matter in the B grade.”

Felix frowned, “We get to keep it, right?”

Lemi nodded slowly, “Speaking of, I was hoping since you got moved up two classes… Aedur might be able to keep this one…”

Felix immediately nodded, already thinking the same thing, “It’s most suitable to Aedur anyways. Mind if I examine it in the meantime though?”

Aedur nodded, “Of course.”

During the couple of hours left at the end of class where the Adept went through their notes on how everyone performed, Felix examined the flower.

The jar containing it massively muted the energies it was exuding but not entirely. He could feel the mana within the jar itself and that was what he examined but the jar also seemed to preserve the flower by almost slowing time. It was Lemi’s jar and he found that fascinating as well but he didn’t have time to analyze it and the flower. He figured even if he focused solely on the jar, he wouldn’t get anywhere during the remaining class time so he ignored it for now.

Mana all around the flower was slowly converted to its specific attunement. Felix reached into it and tried to replicate the attunement but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t even get close.

He got aspects of the attunement and managed to produce golden mana and light green mana, to his vision, but never the same deep earthy green or full golden hue. The mana he created was almost hollow in comparison and the color never quite matched. If he was being honest, the colors weren’t even that close either. They were shades of the same color but the variance between shades of green were massive.

Ding You have gained a level in [D -Arcane] Mana Engineer (996 => 997)

Damnit.

At the end of the class-after the Adept praised their plan and criticized their idiotic execution forcing Felix to tank the creature-Felix handed the flower back to Lemi. She held onto it for Aedur, who were friends outside of class, and he informed the Adept that he and Peace would be moving up a class.

It was too complicated to find four people that fit right into the middle of a class so, luckily for Felix and Peace, they were moved right up to the 3rd class from the 5th. Skipping the 4th was well worth Felix’s time and he was rather glad he hadn’t skipped class.

As they headed back through the portal to class then onto the courtyard, a wild Melody appeared from round a tree. She waved happily, her outfit completely dichotomous with the gloomy, overcast weather.

Felix and Peace walked over and they all walked back to Felix’s dorm together.

“So, you guys both visited the event already, right? Find anything cool?” Melody smiled as she skipped along next to them.

Peace just shrugged and Felix nodded, “Found the Integrated main city, not the one I came from fortunately.”

Melody nodded, “That would have been… awkward. What’s it like?”

Felix shrugged, “Big desert city, though they have flowing water throughout. Big pyramids and monolithic structures. Lots of magical siege weapons built into the more iconic structures. People are nice, Rakyt. White fur, humanoid, tall pointy ears, long snouts.”

Melody looked at him with some surprise, “You met them?”

Felix nodded, “Yeah, they want me to trade them information and basic goods in return for inventory points.”

“Huh. All of the other cities and towns we found didn’t let anyone in. They sent out messengers but they didn’t talk much.”

Felix sighed, “I think it’s probably because I’m still in the D grade right now. Also, I’m an Integrated too so…”

Melody nodded, “Right, sometimes I forget how low your level is.”

“Speaking of, I’ll probably try and hit C grade in the next few days. I’ll have to see if my experiment worked and if I can find my familiar first but, we’ll see.”

Melody’s brows waggled, “What experiment?”

“I got a construct body as a reward from one of the ancient dungeons.” Felix explained, “I bound a soul to it and now it’s time to go and see if it’s awake yet.”

“Oooh, fun. Speaking of Ancient Ruin Dungeons, rumor has it there’s some big secret quest tied to them and people are focused pretty heavily on them at the moment.”

Felix nodded, “I see.”

Melody rolled her eyes and sighed, “Just be careful. From what I’ve heard, this is the most brutal integration event that anyone can remember. Latest counts put the current death toll just over 10.”

Felix frowned, “That’s the most brutal?”

Melody shook her head, “Deaths not surrenders. The highest death count there are records of is 10% by the end. That number also tends to accelerate near the end so hitting 10 in a few days… It seems a lot of factions got permission to be more lethal here. Normally killing people is heavily discouraged because it angers the other factions and could lead to war in some cases. Right now though… it seems like the gods don’t care if they start a war.”

Felix hummed thoughtfully, “Why wouldn’t they care?”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She shrugged, “No idea, but… on top of all that, the alliances are much more expansive than usual. The Archons are a Divine Alliance but they usually compete against each-other in the events just… give each-other some consideration. This time, they’re all working together. Seriously, be careful.”

Felix nodded, “I’ll be fine. Thanks for the info though.”

She nodded, “I also just learned Adaline was hunted down by a large group on her first day in there and was forced to surrender. Her guns are soul bound so she didn’t lose them but she lost some other items. From what I hear, no one at Eramith has died yet though, so… that’s good.”

Felix winced, “Rough.” and walked into his dorm room. He immediately opened his portal to the event and Peace and Melody followed him in. Neither of them seemed to mind switching their portal location within the event and he didn’t mind revealing his vault to them. The real valuables were the cores which he kept in his inventory anyways and the knowledge which was ingrained in his head. The construct body was valuable but he trusted the two of them not to care about it much.

As soon as she stepped inside, Melody gasped then started giggling, as she saw the construct.

Felix had expected it to be awake by now and for some reason, standing. Instead, it was on the ground moving all of its joints at random which resulted in it essentially flopping around like a fish.

Felix scratched at his chin, “Huh. I guess it didn’t come with any memories or anything…”

Melody shrugged, “I am astonished you got something so advanced and valuable out of a Dungeon reward… even if it has… issues.”

Peace walked over and put a hand on the construct then closed his eyes, a moment later, he looked over at Felix, “It seems this construct is unable to access the experiences within its own core soul.”

Felix frowned and walked over himself, placing a hand on the construct and reached into its soul. Given it was essentially an extension of his own soul, Felix’s ability to see inside of it was fantastic.

Looking towards the core of the soul, Felix understood what was happening and frowned. Not only could this construct not access the experiences from his core soul, but it couldn’t create any either. It was stuck because it had no way to actually learn. The experiences the construct had were too insignificant to be imprinted onto the soul seed formed form his soul and reaching towards it, his soul refused access. The construct was too different from him and so it was considered an entirely separate, foreign entity, an alien.

Once he realized the problem, he quickly verified and realized all of the soul constructs running around in his mind had the same issue. They were borrowing from his memories and his imagination helped shape them but, they were stuck. They would never learn or grow in any significant way. Their minds would evolve but in a robotic, computer like way. If they didn’t exist in his head too, they wouldn’t have any access to his experiences at all.

So I guess I become a necromancer then. I’m not sure how else to give these constructs, this one and the ones in my mind, core souls… Actually, I should at least try. Seems like bullshit that necromancers are the only ones that can create leveling constructs or creatures.

With a plan in mind, Felix nodded to his two guests, “Alright, I think I’m going to spend some time working on fixing this.”

Peace nodded and Melody pouted but they both got the message. Felix opened a portal for each of them, letting them pick from the coordinates he had measured on his map. Melody happily disappeared to somewhere she hadn’t been yet and Peace seemed to choose at random. Just before she left, Melody turned to Felix, “Be careful.”

Felix frowned, “It’d be pretty embarrassing to get killed by something I created… somewhat… had a hand in creating.”

Melody shook her head, “I meant in the event as a whole. It’s just… Anyways, just be careful.”

Felix nodded and closed the door behind her then popped into his Soul Garden where he began screwing with some of the souls still trapped in his Soul Ring. He specifically kept various random souls around for this exact reason.

Picking one at random, he began tearing away layers until he was left with just a core soul. From there, he grabbed as much anima as he could find and squeezed it all into a similar size and shape. Finally, placing them next to each-other, Felix began to compare and contrast the core soul with his ball of anima.

With each difference he found, he carefully modified and shaped his ball. He spent hours doing this, even completely dissecting the core soul to find the internal differences a few times, retrieving a new one and continuing from there. Luckily, he was able to extend his Soul Garden’s time dilation whenever he was using his consciousness alone so he wasn’t wasting too much time.

After a few days of Soul Garden time, Felix felt completely stuck. He had replicated the structure, the small details and all the intent he could find but still, some seemingly intangible difference remained. Looking at one, it was obvious which was the core soul, he could tell but he couldn’t identify why. Structurally they were identical and, if it were possible to look at them, Felix was confident they would appear identical.

He continued to carefully rip apart various core souls until he had completely run out but felt no closer to the answer than he had before.

Ugh. Sprites like Nova just… appear. So, why is it so difficult to create a core soul?

With no other souls left for him to compare against, Felix resorted to something he didn’t think would help much at all, comparing against his own soul. The issue was that his soul was so significantly different in so many ways from other souls. There was also Grim’s but that was harder for him to analyze and equally as unique given its constructed nature.

Also, Grim had no idea if he was created through necromancy or some other arcane method so they had no idea how useful his would be.

Ignoring the obvious differences between the two souls, Felix began trying to find the intangible within his own soul. The aspect that made it feel alive whereas the one he had created, didn’t.

He ended up spending almost two weeks diving into the intricacies of his soul. Structure was important and what he had mostly paid attention to up until now but this time, he was focused on what was in the anima. He wanted to know what intents, experiences, and knowledge it might contain.

In his Soul Garden, two weeks was just under an hour of real time so he didn’t feel too bad about wasting time. On the contrary, he was pretty sure he had finally found the difference.

Finally opening the portal back to his Pocket Home, Felix walked over to the construct and placed his hand against it. After a few minutes of straining his will, he decided to take a risk and reached into the construct’s soul with a tendril of his own. Extending his soul out of his body the way he was was incredibly difficult at first. He was only able to reach a few inches into the construct but each second that passed, it seemed to get significantly easier.

The rapid progress confused Felix until he realized he was fighting his own soul. It wanted to stay within his body and didn’t want to become a tendril, it was used to being inside his body. Once it was exposed and through the will of the rest of his soul, he convinced it and so, it became easier. Realistically, he should have used something other than the layer that suffused his body but, it was the outermost layer and he didn’t have enough direction to create a new layer.

With the tendril, Felix reached into the core of its soul, careful not to damage anything lest he have to recreate it. Around the soul seed, Felix inflated the area like a balloon with anima, the soul seed bouncing around inside of it. Once he was satisfied with the amount, he exerted the entirety of his will upon the anima until he felt it finally give way.

Instead of the essentially dormant anima that largely surrounded him in the ambient, surrounding souls and in creatures, the anima was now lively. The intangible difference he had identified was that the anima within a core soul was almost in an excited state. It seemed to be ripe and ready to absorb experiences and grow. It was soft and malleable but also excited and almost bouncing around like a child.

It was a property he was dubbing the spark of life because he hadn’t found it anywhere else but within live souls. Once he had identified it, he was able to find some within his core soul and in Grim’s. No matter where else he looked, he simply didn’t find it anywhere. The spark, once he had implanted it into the construct and the test soul in his ring had immediately spread and connected itself to the surrounding soul.

Not only were they essentially brought to life but the entire thing became a whole. The spark remained contained to the core soul but it was like the whole thing had woken up. On top of that, he realized how Nova had likely formed. A spark was all that was needed because once even a tiny morsel was excited in this way, all the anima around it was drawn as if by a magnet. The curiosity and potential, the life itself, was enough to attract a surrounding soul.

Stepping back, Felix noticed a small, warped circle on the construct’s chest where his hand had been. It was like a stain and he had no idea how it had gotten there, it definitely wasn’t there just a moment ago.

He largely ignored that for the time being as he was presented with a familiar, and very annoying, screen.

Congratulations!

You have received a new title.

Lifegiver: Imbue a soul with the spark of life.

Would you like to equi-

No. Well that was easier than I thought. I mean… it took nearly all my will power to excite the anima like that and there is no way I could do it again for a while but still, I… created life.

With his soul seed still floating around within the core soul of the construct, it would-if Felix’s guesses were right-be imbued with many of his experiences as a starting point. Also, his soul seed would make it so that it was impossible for the ideals of the construct to stray far from his own for any extended period of time. They would always gradually drift towards his own. At least, until the construct had enough experiences of their own to overwhelm the seed.

That would be difficult though because every core experience it had would be tainted and colored by Felix’s point of view. The construct wouldn’t ever really have the chance to deviate from what he had made them. Felix didn’t care if it didn’t have free will or freedom of interpretation to become its own person, he’d much rather have a construct that was bound to him.

The filter he had created would also slowly sink into the core soul and eventually be completely consumed by it. In turn, everything Felix had carefully imbued to shape the construct, would transfer to the core soul.

However, that also meant the construct was no longer reliant on him anymore to live and actually gained some amount of independence by killing him. He didn’t think it would be an issue though and didn’t really worry about it for the time being. Assuming his theories were right, the construct wouldn’t know how to fight with a sword because Felix didn’t know how to so, it wasn’t really a threat to him at the moment.

This time, as the rest of the soul had already acclimated to the body, the construct woke up after just a few seconds. Rolling over onto its back, the construct pushed itself to its feet then nodded in Felix’s direction.

Felix nodded back, “Hello. Would you rather name yourself or do you want me to provide a name?”

The construct merely pointed at him and Felix nodded, “Alright well, you remind me a bit of a samurai so how about Sam 1.”

The construct shook its head and held up a finger, then no fingers.

“Sam 0? Although I would just shorten that to Zero?”

The construct nodded at the second name and Felix shrugged, “Alright Zero. I know you have no idea how to use a sword right now but I guess you are free to do whatever. Just try not to do anything I wouldn’t although… you shouldn’t really have any inclination to anyways…”

Zero nodded and began practicing sword forms Felix had memories of and experimenting.

Felix watched for almost a minute, slightly jealous that Zero was able to sit there and learn something from scratch like that. He would have liked to learn everything, given time but he just didn’t feel like he had that at the moment.

There was no specific deadline but there was an event ongoing, Tekragoraxius’ plans for him and plenty of rumors of upcoming turmoil. Maybe one day he would spend the time to learn all kinds of weapons, martial arts, professions and everything between but no time soon.

Alright with that done, I don’t know how much else I can do to guarantee the Soulbinder profession. I think it’s finally time I finally evolve. Or, almost time. I need to find Nova to make sure we sync things up.

Without any better way of communicating with Tekragoraxius, Felix reached for his soul bond with Nova and conveyed to her that he wanted to evolve. In return, she excitedly showed him impressions of all the things she had been doing and also, that she was ready too.

He wasn’t sure if it was possible for them to simply teleport him from anywhere and he didn’t have any coordinates himself so he headed out of the event and opened a portal to the warehouse he had been provided.

As soon as he stepped inside, he caught sight of Rathelius, Tekragoraxius’ disciple.

[?] Rathelius (Lvl ?)

Rathelius nodded in a kind of half bow of respect as Felix approached, “The Dragon Mother awaits.” With a sweep of his claw, a portal opened next to them and Felix stepped through. Rathelius followed behind but quickly disappeared as Felix looked around.

He definitely wasn’t in the same room as last time. Instead, he found himself in the middle of a flowered field with a mountain range in the distance. In the sky above, there lay a constant and all encompassing cloud cover. It was somewhat interesting to Felix that there was not a single hint of sky anywhere, something that was no doubt intentional. It was hard for him to focus on that though because the clouds also glowed with a whitish light.

While technically the weather was overcast, it wasn’t dark or gloomy at all. In fact, had he not looked up or seen the sky, Felix would have confidently stated that it was a bright, clear summer day.

Before he got much further with examining his surroundings though, Felix was assaulted by a small dragon, just a few meters long. Shorter and smaller than Endycor but with much finer scales that varied from completely dark and all absorbing black to a blue that was so close to black they blended in almost completely.

Felix barely managed to stay standing, his cloak enchantment helped but it was set to ignore his own soul. Once Nova’s body was close enough, the enchantment deactivated and he was left holding her entire body up.

Considering she wasn’t actually a dragon, she didn’t have internal organs and she was lighter than she should have been. However, she was still a small, likely metal though probably hollow, dragon.

“Hello, hello. Yes, I missed you too. Yes I realize you were waiting, I’m sorry about that. That all sounds super fun- Holy shit you’re heavy.”

[D - Cursed] Nova, Ravenous Matter Spirit (Lvl 999)

Felix’s brow furrowed, “Oh huh, you really have been waiting. How long have you been stuck at level 999?”

Felix hmphed appreciatively, “Really? Almost the entire time you were here? I guess that makes some sense, yeah sorry about that. Guess you were just waiting on me.”

With Nova finally off of him, though she was still running and flying around him, jumping up onto him occasionally, they slowly made their way over to Tekragoraxius who was waiting a few hundred meters away.

Seeing her out in the field, Felix was once again completely taken by her gargantuan size.

Once he was within conversational distance, Felix looked over and saw a large 20 meter wide, square portal through which he spotted Endycor.

[D - Legendary] Endycor (Lvl 999)

Tekragoraxius greeted Felix with a billowing breath of flames that conveyed fairly warm and welcome feelings though not without a heavy undertone of serious parent vibes.

“Felix Kade. You are ready to evolve?”

Felix nodded, “Yeah, I’ve been stalling too long. I either get the profession I wanted or I don’t at this point. I can get my profession there whenever I want and I only need a kill or two for my class.”

She nodded then turned her head slightly towards Nova, “Before you do, there is something we need of you.”

Felix looked at Nova expecting to have an evolution screen brought up before him but instead, The Dragon Mother continued, “There are a number of trials and rituals that dragons traditionally undergo before an evolution. Endycor has already passed all of them though he refuses to evolve until Nova does. Nova has completed all but one.”

“The final trial for a dragon evolving into the C grade is overcoming their greatest fear. We have already undergone the ritual to identify it but Nova’s greatest fear is something she refuses to talk about with me. From what I gather however, you protected her from it in the past.” Tekragoraxius looked at him but he got the sense she was okay with him keeping whatever it was a secret.

Felix wasn’t entirely sure what it was she was so afraid of because lots of things came to mind, though he wasn’t completely clueless.

“I would ask that you, out of respect for Nova’s wishes, do not inform me of what it is but I was hoping you would be able to help her face this fear of hers. We will be waiting here and you may retrieve coordinates if you wish. Rathelius will allow your portals to this planet while we are waiting.”

Felix nodded in respect then quickly looked at Nova before responding, What are you afraid of?

He was immediately filled with a wave of emotions that he carefully had to pry free so he could objectively sense the rest of the message. He saw a terrible fear and the sense of something hunting her. He felt her soul quivering and her running for her life. Finally, he got the sense of complete emptiness surrounding her, like there was not just an absence of matter, not just nothing but less than nothing.

Felix recognized the feeling, having felt the same thing himself through his nascent matter senses and felt a wave of relief wash over him along with new worries. He was initially worried that he would have to go hunt down some creature or find something in their past. Now he was worried because the Endless Hunger could very easily kill her.

Turning back to The Dragon Mother, Felix nodded, “I can do it… right here sort of. I have a Pocket Home marble, mind if we just do this in there?” Felix held up the marble for her to see.

She nodded, “Of course, you are in need of a flat vertical surface, yes?”

Felix nodded and a moment later, Rathelius appeared. With a flick of his wrist, a rectangular portal appeared and moved backwards a meter, extruding a stone block. Once closed, the block dropped to the ground with a thump and provided the perfect surface.

Walking over, Felix and Nova headed into his Pocket Home where he closed the door behind him. He wasn’t certain they couldn’t see into his Pocket Home but it was the best he had. He could have done everything in his Soul Space but that completely defeated the purpose of Nova facing her fears.

Being in his Soul Space alone was enough for the feeling The Endless Hunger gave off to be completely suppressed. To Nova, it would feel nearly normal with all the sensations it delivered simply not there.

There wasn’t anything he could really do about it though for the time being so, he chose a fairly flat section of ground and quickly modified the gravity spell to exclude the two of them. That limited the rate The Endless Hunger would be able to grow in the worst case. It would grow using the air and ambient anima but he could hold the ambient mana back.

Everything else was very diffused and so it wouldn’t grow very quickly because of it.

Using slight Force spells, Felix kept the two of them floating in the air and completely stationary. Confirming Nova was ready, Felix reached inwards and prepared himself then pulled out a small orb of The Endless Hunger and held it out in his hand.

Nova immediately started to pull back and cower in fear but Felix was only barely paying attention. He was almost completely consumed with just holding it still and keeping it from eating his hand. He had planned for this though and a moment later, the marble was lifted off his hand just an inch or so.

With his focus freed up, he took over and used his own Force spells to suspend it then he looked over at Nova.

She seemed to be carefully building up her courage and Felix let her. She carefully unrolled her body and returned to a more normal posture, though still with some fear evident. From there she carefully reached forwards, Felix having suspended them far enough apart that she had to stretch but could reach the orb.

He had no intention of letting her touch it but she was free to approach and ‘face the fear’, whatever that meant for a dragon.

Her neck craned forwards just a few inches away at which point she stopped and grew used to the sensation. Felix patiently waited a few minutes, almost getting distracted as he debated then dismissed the idea of training himself. His distraction almost resulted in catastrophe as Nova suddenly swiped forwards with her claws, no doubt in a naive attempt to kill The Endless Hunger.

Luckily, Felix had actually sensed her intentions from their soul bond in advance and was able to pull his arm back and out of the way.

“You can’t touch it. Yes I know I touch it but… I’m strong enough. I don’t know if she could touch it, probably not. No, I am definitely not saying that.”

Felix shook his head then presented the orb, that was only slightly darker than Nova’s darkest scales, to her again. As soon as he did, he watched with horror as he realized he wasn’t fast enough.

Nova had released a solid looking beam of fire from her mouth right at The Endless Hunger in his hand. His last thought before he sprang into action was that technically, he had said she couldn’t touch it and that he was an idiot for doing so.

The beam of fire was far too fast for Felix to do anything, it was going to hit the orb. Despite that, he reached upwards with his hand, using an instinct cast to move as fast as he could to stow the orb again.

As he knew would happen, the beam of fire hit the orb before his hand reached it and was almost instantly transformed.

Pure blackness raced along the stream of fire back into Nova’s mouth, transforming the fire and growing uncontrollably. Felix managed to stow the orb and some of the stream but the blackness reached her mouth before he could stop it.

He immediately smashed himself into Nova with an instinct cast, tracing his arm through the stream of blackness, stowing every bit of it he came in contact with. His focus was nearly singular in saving Nova but he had just enough presence left to swing his other hand over and stow the splashed droplets before they landed anywhere.

Though Nova’s scales were only a few shades lighter than The Endless Hunger consuming her, having them right next to each-other, there was a stark delineation between the blacks.

Before he could worry about stowing any of it, Felix’s hand finally hit Nova’s body and he slammed as many soul tendrils as he could control into her. Dozens of soul tendrils, empowered by his conviction in the dire circumstances, tore into Nova’s soul with abandon. They surrounded, stopped, contained or stowed the blackness, whatever he could do to minimize the damage.

He knew he was hurting Nova with his tendrils tearing through her, he could feel her pain directly through their soul bond and he used that. He allowed it to completely wash over him so he could pinpoint where the various pains were coming from.

As it was coming from his soul and he needed to feel it, all of it, Felix couldn’t turn off or dull the pain. It didn’t matter though, he was more than capable of enduring it, his soul almost welcoming the minor challenge. On the other hand, he knew Nova was feeling the worst pain of her entire existence.

Ripping creeping tendrils of inky blackness out of her body and soul, Felix refused to let the horror of the situation before him affect his work. At least a quarter of Nova’s body was just gone and even more of her soul. She could live without that though, what really instilled fear in his heart was the fact that the blackness was getting closer and closer to her core soul.

Felix could now create the spark of life, what he couldn’t do was recreate all the experiences, ideals and emotions that made Nova who she was. He couldn’t just back them up and recreate her identically later on. If she died to wounds, there was a slight chance he could revive her if he was nearby and fast enough and had some way to repair her body. If she died to something that consumed her core soul, there was no hope.

Even backing up his own memories, he knew that was just the surface. He was backing up as much as he could and still, he was completely incapable of transferring the entirety of the experiences. He couldn’t transfer all of them and the ones he could transfer, he couldn’t wholly transfer. Still, it was the best he could do for the time being. So long as his soul existed, all he needed to preserve were his surface memories.

With Nova though, he would need everything and he had, nothing.

A dozen more tendrils joined the first, branching and forking off the existing ones as Felix desperately tried to rid her off all the corruption.

Once almost half of Nova’s soul and over a third of her body had been consumed, Felix was finally removing the last tiny remnants he had trapped. Just as he confirmed there wasn’t any of it left, the two of them bounced off the wall of his tower meaning no more than a few seconds had passed. To Felix though, it had felt like he had been fighting for hours.

He wasn’t exhausted physically or spiritually but his will power was strained and sore.

His job wasn’t done yet though. Nova was evidently unconscious as Felix felt nothing but the static of existence pouring through their soul bond. There wasn’t really anything Felix could do about Nova’s body shy of feeding her but her soul, was a different story.

As Felix had-barely-managed to keep her core soul in tact, all that was missing was massive chunks of Nova’s second layer. Her third layer was as his used to be, a non factor in her actual soul and just some ambient anima that had stuck around her so, he didn’t bother with it. In fact, he quickly ripped it all free so he had more room to work.

Using anima from The Soul Devouring Ring, his Soul Space and even his own soul, Felix carefully filled in all the blanks. He made absolutely certain to ensure everything melded together seamlessly. He wasn’t trying to infuse himself into Nova’s soul so he simply wiped the new anima clean and imbued whatever he could from the rest of Nova’s soul. Everything else would, given time, spread into the mostly blank anima.

Almost a minute passed as Felix argued with himself before he finally came to a decision. Given he was already in Nova’s soul and that she was unconscious, he began to slightly modify things.

Firstly, he added in a lot more anima to bolster her soul overall. Adding more anima by itself wasn’t very useful though so he began to compress it. As he had found from his own experimentation, compressing the outer layers to be denser than the core soul was a really bad idea that often ended in implosion. So, he started with her core soul.

This time, he was very careful to ensure all of the anima he added was completely blank and before actually merging it in, he made sure her experiences and ideals transferred in to some extent. Holding the anima next to her core soul, he assisted the process and carefully imbued the anima with everything that Nova was.

Once satisfied, Felix poured the anima directly into her core soul, once again with extreme caution. Finally, he reinvigorated the spark of life within her core soul with every remaining shred of will he had, ensuring it wouldn’t be drowned out by the new anima he had added. He repeated this numerous times over the course of a few hours-as his will slowly healed-until he deemed there was enough there then, he compressed her core soul.

Felix didn’t get even close to as dense as his core soul but by the time he was done, Nova’s new core was close to the density of his second layer and denser than any creature he had ever harvested. After that, he compressed her second layer and enhanced the intent in the layer so it wasn’t just denser with the same amount of will. Instead it was denser both in quantity of anima, quality and imbued intent.

Finally, once her second layer was big enough, Felix began assisting her in the process of suffusing her body with anima. It had helped him tremendously and had no side effects that he knew of for him or Zero, albeit they were nascent. Either way, he was confident it would help so he gave it a loose shape. He didn’t completely commit to the process though and instead left it unattached so Nova could make the decision herself.

If she went through with it, it would would be easy for her to finish the process. If she didn’t want to, it would morph back into its normal shape in time.

All that was left was to wake her and so, Felix nudged Nova through their soul bond. He might have felt bad about forcing her awake was he not certain now that she was more than healed back up. He nudged her again much more forcefully this time.

With a yawn that-creepily came out of her missing front side-made Felix scoff, Nova began looking around with confusion. She quickly repaired her front half, returning her form to what it was before with a slight difference.

Instead of almost completely black with really-dark-blue-that-was-basically-just-off-black scales, Nova had streaks of rich blue trailing across her body that grew from a blue hand print on her chest. The streaks grew sparser as they traveled along her body and her back third was almost completely void of them.

Upon seeing them along with the hand print, Felix sighed as he knew exactly what they were. In his mind, his soul tendrils hadn’t looked like lightning but seeing them on Nova’s body, especially in deep and rich blue, they definitely resembled an orb of lightning.

“What do you remember?”

In response, Felix got a memory of Nova blasting the orb of Endless Hunger he had held in his hand with a stream of fire. Instead of consuming the fire and ripping her apart though, Nova seemed convinced she had obliterated it completely. The thought just made Felix chuckle, he saw no reason to correct her. It wasn’t like she would ever come across it on her own in the future anyways.

Before she got too excited from her tremendous victory, Felix made sure to walk her through suffusing her body with her soul. She was happy to do so and followed along, not really making the decision herself so much as listening to Felix’s opinion, someone she trusted.

A few dozen minutes later, she was happily prancing around and morphing parts of her body rapidly.

Felix sighed as he opened the exit and stepped through, Nova bolting back through a moment later.

They found Tekragoraxius exactly where they had left her along with Endycor through the portal and Nova happily walked over and greeted them. The flames of her greeting breath, and Endycor’s in turn, simply rolled off the surface of the portal but they seemed happy nonetheless.

When she turned to The Dragon Mother and released a stream that looked like liquid fire, Felix was surprised to see it had enough force and momentum to reach her. Tekragoraxius was surprised for an entirely different reason.

She immediately upon being hit, bent her head all the way down and examined Nova from all angles by craning and twisting her serpentine like neck. Nova, completely oblivious to what had happened, proudly shuffled on the spot as if she were showing off.

“Traditionally, a dragon’s fear is personal and may be kept private… What the hell happened in there?”

Before Nova could answer, Felix shoved a message down their bond warning Nova not to tell Tekragoraxius about The Endless Hunger at all costs. She responded back like it was obvious causing Felix to shake his head at her.

Turning to The Dragon Mother, Felix acted oblivious, “Why? What’s the matter?”

She nodded slowly in understanding, “It is not my place to ask. I apologize.”

Felix shrugged in an attempt to feign indifference.

The Dragon God nodded, “Nova is now ready. What do you require to finally hit your evolution?”

Felix had been holding off on any evolution because he had a completely unfounded fear. A part of him was convinced that if he hit level 1000, the list of evolutions would be generated and locked in. If he then didn’t do enough to get Soulbinder, he wouldn’t get it at all. He was also worried there might be a hidden requirement that you had to get it on the first try.

All of it was unfounded and logically, he knew it was ridiculous. Ultimately though, he didn’t really lose much by waiting and so, he had. He had covered up his work and accomplishments by hiding them in his Soul Space and Soul Garden to make sure The System couldn’t award him any levels. Now, all he had to do was prove himself.

Pulling out a small metal disc and a quill, Felix inscribed an enchantment he considered fairly simple but incorporated some more advanced concepts.

Ding You have gained 11 levels in [D -Arcane] Mana Engineer (997 => 1000)

C Grade

You have reached the prerequisite level to upgrade to C grade in your profession.

You-

Felix closed the screen and turned to The Dragon God, “I just need a few class levels now.”

She nodded and a moment later, Rathelius reappeared along with a portal next to Felix and Nova. They each stepped through their respective portals and into their own respective hunting grounds.

The portals remained open and just a few minutes later, Felix stepped back onto the field and saw everyone was already there, waiting for him.

Nova and Endycor had both hit level 1000 in the few minutes that had passed which meant they were all ready.

Venturing one last look at his Status Screen in the D grade, Felix nodded with satisfaction. He had already integrated a few things he had found in the warehouse solely so he could raise his stats a little. Grim had collected all the information he had on classes, races and professions in his library along with many questions to the Guild of Answers in order to create a scale.

The scale answered one simple question, ‘What is the highest known limit for stats per level in the D grade?’

It got a little complicated when they took into account instantaneous stats, combined races, classes and professions but ultimately, they decided to go with the biggest possible number. Felix had-mostly through Soul Harvesting and manually modifying his body-just barely exceeded that number for the D grade.

Name: Felix Kade FREE 0 Innate: Ascendant Prodigy: Mana (Wizard) STR 283,780 Class: [D - Legendary] Reaper (Lvl 1000) DEX 167,865 Race: [D - Unique] Wanderer (Lvl 1000) AGI 276,719 Profession: [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (Lvl 1000) PER 140,643 Health: 2,920,420 / 2,920,420 VIT 292,042 Mana: 140,000,000 / 140,000,000 INT 365,403 Energy: 2,500,000 / 2,500,000 END 278,638

With everything ready, he finally opened back up the screen he had ignored earlier in his specific hunting ground Tekragoraxius had provided.

C Grade

You have reached the prerequisite level to upgrade to the C grade in your class, profession and race.

You may open the evolution selection screen to select your upgrade now.

Note: It is possible for these options to change if you decide not to evolve now.

Note: You will continue to gain experience, but you will not gain any stats from the levels beyond the threshold until you evolve. Those levels will be active as soon as you evolve however.

Let’s start with class then, just in case. Class Evolution Selection Screen

Felix scrolled through the options, mostly because he enjoyed reading them.

[C - Special] Beast Tamer

The Beast Tamer fights along with their most trusted companions, beasts. Tame, raise and train beasts of various strengths as trusted companions and deadly combatants. As the trained beasts grow, so will the tamer based on the strength of the bonds with their creatures. Skills focus on buffing the beasts, fighting as a unit, training, raising and communicating with them along with the option for beasts to learn skills themselves, at higher bond strengths. Stats gained from tamed beasts, number of bonds and strength of bonds dependent on soul strength.

+5 STR per level

+5 PER per level

+5 AGI per level

+5 END per level

+60 FREE per level

I mean… It’s cool but… I feel like getting a Special option is kind of a slap in the face.

[C - Arcane] Battlefield Enchanter (Combination Class & Profession)

Dedicating themselves solely to enchanting, The Battlefield Enchanter relies on enchanted equipment and items to control and decimate any fight. Skills aid in the mass production of items and have a very strong synergy with enchanting based profession skills. Other skills include enchantment healing and regeneration, temporary enchantment power increases, remote enchantment communication and control.

+600 INT per level

+50 FREE per level

You know… that isn’t a terrible option. I’m not taking it but, it is definitely better than most of the classes I saw in the D grade in terms of suitability.

[C - Ancient] Construct Master (Combination Class & Profession)

The Construct Master utilizes various constructs to create their own personal army. As the general and healer of said army, skills focus both on construction and maintenance as well as battlefield control and communication. This class strongly synergizes with all arcane profession skills but especially construct and enchantment based profession skills.

+600 INT per level

+100 FREE per level

Okay that… is tempting for the name alone. Fucking awesome. Way better choices this time around. Not enough for me to switch yet cause these Reaper skills-NOW THAT I CAN ACTUALLY USE THEM-are super awesome. Still though, tempting.

[C - Mythic] Wizard

The Wizard is a Mythic class that is rarely given out and reserved for the very few who are worthy of it. It focuses on understanding the workings of spells, mana and magic as deeply as possible to uncover the mysteries of the universe. This class is heavily focused on research to obtain and guard knowledge. There is no penalty to swap spells from the Wizard’s spell list so long as they have previously researched the new spell. Spells that have been researched are typically held in a spell book in case they need to be swapped onto the Wizard’s spell list. Swapping spells in the spell list takes a period of an hour reduced by intelligence to a minimum of 1 minute.

As the direct upgrade from the D grade Wizard, in the C grade, the Wizard class is designed to overcome and make up for the weaknesses of the D grade class. Not only has the wielder proven their worth but their foundation of knowledge-the most important asset for a wizard-has increased dramatically.

Spell List size: 50

+50 PER per level

+50 DEX per level

+300 INT per level

+50 FREE per level

Holy shit… What are those stats? Those are literally higher than the maximum on our scale. The spell list thing is really annoying because otherwise, this class sounds great. Mysteries of the universe, spell formation, mana and understanding, basically everything I like. You know, maybe I should switch over to this.

[C - Ancient] Reaper

Following in the footsteps of the progenitor, this class hones in on their path and further deviates from System standards and control. Soul harvesting is still a focus of the class but more emphasis is placed on the structure of harvested souls, the user’s soul and how to leverage the most from each. Skills are still based on the concept of augmenting the user rather than expanding their abilities and continues down this path with newly available skills and upgrades to existing skills.

+0 per level

[? - Ancient] The Reaper’s Personal Research Notes

[? - Ancient] The Reaper’s Favourite Cloak

[SS - Ancient] Soul Structure Schematic & Research Compendium

[S - Ancient] Soul Harvesting Manual

Are those… items? Those are items right? Holy shit I… I have to take thi- Hold on, there’s one more?

[C - Mythic] Reaper

Deviating from the path of the progenitor, this class leverages System standards and control and abuses them as much much as possible. Soul harvesting mechanically is less of a focus of the class but more emphasis is placed on bending System rules to gain stats from kills regardless. Soul strength from kills is instead increased directly by The System. Previous Reaper skills are replaced with System based variants that accomplish the same task through the use of The System instead of through the use of the user’s soul. The skill requirements for the class have also been opened up and compatibility with all skills assured.

+550 per level

[SSS - Mythic] Skill Compendium

I… Damn, these are both… insane. Having a skill compendium… and those stats… Soul structuring schematics though from a primordial and… damn. As painful as it is, I don’t think I can go with the Mythic variant. That line ‘Soul strength … increased directly by The System’ just… I don’t want anyone-anything-to be affecting my soul that directly except… me. I guess it already kind of does when I level… or… does it? The first option-hopefully-and the class I had in the D grade let me dictate what happened with the souls. It let me dictate harvesting and when The System automated the skill, it just directed my soul so I didn’t have to waste conscious effort. It was still me doing everything. Side note, what is up with these evolutions? This can’t be normal.

Felix took a deep breath then nodded, Select [C - Ancient] Reaper.

C Grade Class Evolution.

Your class selection has been finalized. This option is locked in and cannot be changed. To facilitate the process, you may also select your race and profession upgrades now so that all evolutions happen at once. You may also choose to evolve your class now.

Would you like to evolve your class now?

Yes.

No.

No. Race Evolution Selection Screen.

[Unique] Wanderer

After some deliberation we, The System, have decided to offer a pseudo race evolution. This evolution pales in comparison to a normal evolution at a similar rarity but still offers some of the benefits obtained from a normal race evolution. This evolution is a choice of whether or not you want The System to refine your current body. This refinement will upgrade all cells and components of your current body to a minimum of C grade Special as well as synergize and integrate the various systems and components with each-other.

Estimated stats gained upon refinement:

+21,530 Estimated increase to STR upon evolution.

+20,688 Estimated increase to DEX upon evolution.

+4,961 Estimated increase to AGI upon evolution.

+24,751 Estimated increase to PER upon evolution.

+482 Estimated increase to INT upon evolution.

+11,230 Estimated increase to VIT upon evolution.

+12,238 Estimated increase to END upon evolution.

Stats gained regardless of decision:

+25 to all stats (including FREE) per level.

Do you accept this pseudo evolution?

Yes.

No.

Oh… shit! Agh… Alright leave this open and also open Profession Evolution Selection Screen on the side.

Scrolling through the options, Felix ignored the two combination options that were now locked leaving him with just three choices.

[C - Epic] Construct Architect

The Construct Architect creates and maintains constructs for various purposes. Skills include facilitating the reproduction of existing constructs and designs, repairing existing constructs and upgrading existing constructs. This profession focuses on constructs as a whole and has no specialization such as combat constructs but rather, offers a high compatibility with all construct based skills.

+25 DEX per level

+25 PER per level

+50 INT per level

+25 FREE per level

No thank you.

[C - Arcane] Mana Engineer

The Mana Engineer focuses entirely on mana in all of it’s uses. Most evolutions of Arcane Engineer focus on a specific field, you have shown interest and proficiency in them all. This profession continues in it’s predecessor’s footsteps and focuses on spell form construction, enchanting and the creation of magical contraptions. New to this profession is the area of mana research. Skills dedicated to all areas of focus will be available though few exist that will include all areas. Be careful not to focus on any specific area at the detriment of the others otherwise this profession’s progress will suffer.

+50 DEX per level

+50 PER per level

+200 INT per level

+50 FREE per level

If the next one isn’t what I’m hoping for, I’ve been pretty happy with his this class so far. This definitely isn’t a bad choice.

[C - Ancient] Lifebinder

The Lifebinder not only creates constructs by binding souls to them, but brings them to life. Capable of imbuing the spark of life into a construct’s soul, this class focuses on creating and bringing constructs to life. High skill compatibility with all arcane based skills though no profession specific skills exist. This profession relies heavily on innate abilities that cannot be automated by The System.

+50 DEX per level

+50 PER per level

+250 INT per level

+100 FREE per level

Oh… Oh shit. Yeah alright, give me that one. Lifebinder.

C Grade Profession Evolution.

Your class and profession selec-

Nope.

With the race selection screen still sitting in his field of vision-albeit pushed to the very edge-Felix quickly looked up at Tekragoraxius, “I’ll be back in a few hours. Something I need to do before I finalize my selections.”

She nodded and sighed causing a huge plume of smoke bouncing off the ground, “Of course. I’ll probably need that long to convince Endycor that evolving into a spirit is a terrible idea and won’t allow them to pass through the portal.”

Felix snickered then opened a portal-making sure he memorized the coordinates of the planet-and stepped through to the warehouse.

Not wanting to make anyone wait longer than they had to, Felix rushed through the warehouse starting with the highest grade and rarity corpses. Each corpse he touched he split into two, one symmetrical half for the blood ring and one for his Soul Space.

Given the sheer quantity of corpses, Felix ran out of room in his Soul Space before getting through even a tenth of the warehouse. He had fully expected to run out though and immediately dropped into a meditative pose, dragging his consciousness into his Soul Garden where he began dissecting and analyzing.

He didn’t have to completely and properly analyze anything, all he had to do was take the cells and systems, replace his own then look at the race selection screen. Each time he modified them, the numbers went up and down.

The pseudo evolution was supposed to have The System completely integrate and synergize all his systems and cells. When he introduced foreign cells the screen-as he had hoped it would-showed him the stats from fully utilizing and spreading the highest tier cells in his body for that system. With even a single high grade cell in his skin for example, he was shown the endurance that would result from spreading that throughout his body with perfect integration.

There were some intricacies in terms of combinations of cells and systems but there was no way for him to go through every possible combination so there was a chance he missed something. However, adding in cells and just taking whatever was highest was good enough for him at the moment. To be really sure though, he also added a small sample of everything to every organ in his own body. The cells were dormant for now but he hoped would still count for the evolution.

Lastly, he shaped and shifted his muscles and bones into all kinds of different structures and effectively temporarily crippled himself.

What he was doing was definitely stretching the rules and he knew there was a chance it resulted in him not being offered the pseudo evolutions in the future. He didn’t bother worrying about it though because there really was no way for him to be certain it would be offered again anyways. All he could do was maximize the opportunity right now and deal with things as they came.

Luckily, it didn’t take him long as he was being fairly sloppy. There was no deep analysis or configuration. He didn’t make the cells his own or really modify them much at all other than making them barely function and connect to everything else.

Once he was done, he almost felt sick and actually had to manually hold his body back from attacking the foreign cells he had implanted all over. He didn’t worry about it though as he stepped back through a portal into the field around Tekragoraxius.

As soon as he did, Nova leapt onto him once again except this time he was actively fighting his body and felt awful so he was far less stable. Once she knocked him down, Nova didn’t let him get up and instead insisted he take a look at her evolutions.

[Reaper’s Bond (Legendary - Novice I)]

Familiar Evolution

Your familiar has granted you permission to see its evolution options. You may not choose the evolution yourself, but you may advise the familiar of which choice you would prefer.

Would you like to see the options now?

Yes.

No.

He wasn’t in the best condition to fight her off so he took a look.

Yes.

[C - Epic] Stable Remnant

A stable remnant is a soul unbound to material objets or energy but remains stable instead through their own power. A remnant is less affected by material objects but retains some influence over the material world making them difficult for many to deal with. Through the lack of a physical form, the remnant’s mana manipulation is strengthened. This evolution relies heavily upon the strength of the wielder’s soul to remain stable.

Transcendent: Having been tainted by the curse of hunger, Nova has used its power as fuel for her own strength. Instead of being consumed herself or embracing the curse as a part of herself, she has transcended the curse and made its power her own. Despite no longer being cursed directly by hunger, Nova has not only retained the abilities it granted her but has empowered them.

+600,000 stats upon evolution

+350 stats per level

Oh… sweet.

[C - Legendary] Beast Shifter Spirit

Through some impressive manipulation of matter, Nova has shown a particular fondness towards replicating the forms of beasts. Normally, for a sprite, this would be impossible but Nova’s intelligence and soul strength is exceptional.

A Beast Shifter Spirit is a spirit that shifts between various beasts with the ability to amplify the unique abilities of the beasts they shift into. New beasts can be added by consuming them. The stronger the wielder gets, the higher the percentage of their stats get carried over and the stronger the beasts they can shift into.

Transcendent: Having been tainted by the curse of hunger…

+300,000 to all stats upon evolution

+600 stats per level

These are all kind of awesome actually.

[C - Ancient] Primal Matter Daemon

A Daemon is a broad term used to classify spirits of a certain strength level with a wide array of abilities. While a Daemon may specialize in one area such as Fire, Storm, Crystal, or Matter elementals or spirits, or may even have originated as beasts, they have since branched out. Daemons range from minuscule to colossal in size and in the primeval times, were often worshipped as Guardian Spirits and Minor Nature deities.

This evolution will greatly increase Nova’s control over her size along with her minimum and maximum sizes. Maximum size depends largely on soul strength and matter control. This evolution will also greatly increase Nova’s control over everything other than matter.

Transcendent: Having been tainted by the curse of hunger…

+2,100,000 stats upon evolution

+750 stats per level

Well, I know which one I would pick. Also, 2 million seems so high but it’s because her stats work differently. I would get 300,000 per stat because mine are split into 7, hers aren’t. I know this and yet, seeing all those zeros seems… crazy.

Felix looked up at Nova who was still on top of him, “So, which one are you leaning towards?”

“You want my opinion? Okay well, do you want to be a ghost?” Felix conveyed his idea of what a ghost was directly to Nova.

She shook her head and squawked in disgust at the idea of not being corporeal.

Felix chuckled, “Do you want to be limited to beasts alone, cells and biological matter?” Once again Felix added in the best explanation he could give for the difference.

Once again, Nova expressed her disgust, this time jumping up and down around Felix shaking her head and actually sneezing a cloud of flame at the end.

“Ok so there’s only one option left then. Super big minor nature deity.”

Nova squawked in delight this time then leapt over to tell Tekragoraxius and Endycor all about it.

Felix was happy to be able to get to his feet finally but decided against it halfway up. His everything was in pain and felt wrong so lying down seemed like his best option at the moment.

Looking over towards The Dragon Mother, Felix confirmed they were all ready for the evolution. Glancing back at the screen Felix had left open in his vision, he couldn’t help but laugh maniacally upon seeing how the numbers had gone up.

[Unique] Wanderer

After some deliberation we, The System, have decided to offer a pseudo race evolution. This evolution pales in comparison to a normal evolution at a similar rarity but still offers some of the benefits obtained from a normal race evolution. This evolution is a choice of whether or not you want The System to refine your current body. This refinement will upgrade all cells and components of your current body to a minimum of C grade Special as well as synergize and integrate the various systems and components with each-other.

Estimated stats gained upon refinement:

+230,742 Estimated increase to STR upon evolution.

+221,726 Estimated increase to DEX upon evolution.

+182,740 Estimated increase to AGI upon evolution.

+265,184 Estimated increase to PER upon evolution.

+5,170 Estimated increase to INT upon evolution.

+120,357 Estimated increase to VIT upon evolution.

+131,164 Estimated increase to END upon evolution.

Stats gained regardless of decision:

+50 to all stats (including FREE) per level.

Do you accept this pseudo evolution?

Yes.

No.

Man, even the per level stats went up. I guess those are based on strength of my body at evolution. It must be making me denser or the energy within my cells denser or something like that so the increase is proportional to their strength. It wasn’t increased proportionally to the other numbers though and it must have been rounded. Anyways, Yes.

C Grade Class Evolution.

Your race selection has been finalized. This option is locked in and cannot be changed. All evolution aspects are now locked in. Please place yourself in a safe location as the evolution may take some time. When you are ready, simply pull this screen back up and initiate the process.

Note: Your familiar will evolve alongside you.

Would you like to evolve now?

Yes.

No.

Venturing one last look back at The Dragon Mother, Yes.

This time, Felix wasn’t knocked out at all. In fact, he ended up in his Soul Garden directly and he could still vaguely feel the connection to his body. It was like it was being muted or there was a ton of static interference but his connection to it wasn’t actually weakened, just interfered with.

Considering his recent accomplishments, the next item on Felix’s docket involved the city in his mind so he willed himself over there. Walking into the city for the first time in a while, Felix looked around appreciatively. Not a ton had changed but there were some minor differences.

Mostly, there was more shrubbery and flowers along the path. The constructs hadn’t figured out reproduction on their own yet so there were no new beings residing in the city. Not that he could really call its current inhabitants beings either, not yet at least.

Felix was still fully connected to his own soul and so he was fully capable of accessing everything within it. Starting with the souls he had created to live here and specifically, starting with Orion Felix began manually modifying their souls.

First, he created a dense core that contained the original soul seed and filter. Around that, he wrapped them in a defensive layer to keep everything contained though it wasn’t strictly necessary. Finally, he ignited the spark of life within the core soul.

It was still incredibly strenuous to do so and Felix could feel-and visibly see in his mind-the strain. He had to wait for what had felt like days within his own mind before he felt ready to do the next one. In the meantime, he found Orion and had them walk him through the entire city. He didn’t really notice any major difference though Orion could tell what he had done.

He figured it would take time for Orion to deviate from what he was made to be but that only meant the transition time would be easier for Felix. There were only 11 entities in Felix’s mind including Orion so it didn’t take him an extraordinary amount of time. Either way he was stuck in his own mind for the time being so it wasn’t like there was much else he could do.

In between working on all of the residents of his mind city Felix did some manual work on his computer growth farms along with Mark. He wasn’t ready to give Mark the spark of life just yet, at least not until he had the space to backup all of Felix’s memories and some. Even then, Felix was worried that with a will of his own, Mark might decide to destroy or worse, distort those memories.

He wasn’t going to figure out a solution to that at the moment so he didn’t waste focus on it. Instead, he continued to harvest and tune the computer farms slightly, work on his spell and construct designs and read.

Considering the ridiculous level his time dilation had gotten to, Felix was happy it had only taken just over a month of mental time for his evolution to finish. That meant that in real time, it had only taken just under two hours.

He was more than happy for the time in hindsight as he had ended up doing a lot more reading and experimenting than he had thought. The items he was going to get from his class evolution unfortunately weren’t in his Soul Space or nearby so, they weren’t scanned yet. He did however, have plenty of books on spells and enchantments. Focusing on them and the farm almost exclusively had really shored up his knowledge.

Not that he could do much with that knowledge yet anyways as he didn’t have the focus for it. He did have a plan to alleviate that problem though.

As for the computer, through regular harvesting and gradual improvements, he had managed to create a small repository of ready computers in his mind. He didn’t attach them to souls just yet though because he and Grim had a theory they wanted to test out first.

Finally awakening from his slumber, it took Felix a few moments to adjust to the changes his body had undergone. Even before he opened his eyes, the feeling of being sick and having all his muscles, tissue and organs invaded by foreign cells was gone.

Even his own modifications which he had been happy with, paled in comparison. It was hard to think al the way back to his D grade evolution and compare things not only because his body had changed so much but because those cells were so much weaker.

Now, like when he had evolved into the D grade, his cells and muscles felt so much more in tune with the rest of his body. They felt like a whole and like all of them were his. He had been doing his best to make sure he adapted cells to himself before spreading them out but he knew now, he was going to have to start doing a way better job.

Felix still didn’t dare open his eyes yet, knowing that would present a whole other set of challenges so before he did, he did something else he had been waiting for, opened his status screen.

Name: Felix Kade FREE 1000 Innate: Ascendant Prodigy: Mana (Wizard) STR 826,493 Class: [C - Ancient] Reaper (Lvl 1001) DEX 701,447 Race: [C - Unique] Wanderer (Lvl 1004) AGI 679,187 Profession: [C - Ancient] Lifebinder (Lvl 1008) PER 765,235 Health: 5,934,340 / 5,934,340 VIT 593,434 Mana: 140,000,000 / 140,000,000 INT 383,828 Energy: 2,500,000 / 2,500,000 END 620,184

Holy shit. Wait, Intelligence is my lowest stat… Strength is my highest… I really was destined to be a hulking brute, wasn’t I? I mean, I only need around 400 levels in my profession to put Intelligence at the top again. Still, it looks silly. Okay also, let’s add fixing my energy to my todo list.

Finally, Felix opened his eyes. He had started the evolution lying down so he was currently staring up at the sky. Immediately he was overwhelmed with information. He couldn’t process all of it so after the initial burst, his field of vision narrowed until he was only seeing things in a narrow cone.

Within that cone though, he saw more colors, more detail, he could focus significantly faster on what he was seeing and for the first time, he saw the air itself. Not the atoms or the gas or anything like that but the small particles of dust and sand that drifted along. Before, his eyes would largely ignore them completely, they were too small to bother with. Now, they were clear and present. In fact, he found them kind of annoying after all of a few moments.

Grim and Orion quickly handled the field of vision issue though by ignoring a lot of the information his eyes were seeing which also got rid of the dust, thankfully. Moving incredibly slowly, Felix reached back to push himself up and im-

A massive dragon over 15 meters from tip to tail leapt into the air and completely smothered Felix. He knew it was Nova and her increase of almost 7 times in length was astounding but not nearly as shocking to him was how it was possible for him to stand and lift her.

In general, people and creatures got heavier as they evolved. They did not however, get heavier proportional to strength or really any stat and because of this, stats tended to scale past weight pretty quickly. Felix had been able to lift Nova’s biggest forms even when she used metal in them for a while. They had not however been very easy to lift.

Not that Nova was easy to lift now, he just was just expecting it to be impossible. Instead, he was able to lift up her front half and free himself from her mass without too much trouble.

“Yes, very cool. Very impressed.”

Looking around her, Felix caught sight of Endycor through the portal and saw he had also grown. Instead of Nova being half the size of Endycor, they had essentially swapped places. Endycor had at least doubled in mass but Nova had gone from a few meters long to over 15 meters long. There was really no comparison anymore.

From what Felix could tell too, it seemed as though Tekragoraxius was consoling Endycor as they pouted, likely over the fact that they were the smaller one now.

After a few minutes of Felix praising Nova’s new form, she ran over to the portal and teased Endycor while The Dragon Mother turned to him, “You look much stronger.”

Felix sighed, “I just hope The System isn’t too mad. I kind of abused something it did specially for me.”

She smirked knowingly, “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It will not retaliate or punish you. However, that same loophole will not present itself in the future.”

“I know.”

“Nova’s training is complete for now. Though she may argue to stay longer, I think it would be most beneficial for her to join you in the integration event. Additionally, you should make it known that Arthur is present in the event, if you build up his merciless reputation as well, all the better. His presence alone should suffice though.”

Felix nodded, “Sure, I can do that. I guess I’ll see you in 10 dekads then.”

She sighed, “Yes, likely.”

Corralling Nova took a few minutes but, while she was evidently distraught leaving Endycor behind, that feeling disappeared after all of a few seconds. As soon as Felix conveyed to her where they were going, she bounded along around him which was a little frightening considering her new found size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .