Before opening a portal back to his dorm, Felix made sure to have Nova switch forms back to something less problematic. It took her a fraction of a second to return to a small black kitten, a noticeable improvement from the few seconds it used to take her. Her form wasn’t exactly as it used to be though as even as a kitten, Nova still had a blue hand print with streaks of what looked like lightning trailing out of it.

The hand print wouldn’t be recognizable to anyone but Felix because in her smaller form with fur that wasn’t stationary, it was distorted and looked more like a morphed circle. She happily hopped back up into Felix’s robes and they finally stepped back into his dorm.

Okay, two things I want to do before heading back into the event. First, my items.

Felix focused on the screen that he had pointedly ignored in the presence of Tekragoraxius and accepted the items. Instead of appearing in his Soul Space, the items instead appeared before him. There was no fancy box or anything rather, a bundle of books wrapped in dark cloth dropped to the floor in front of him.

Felix reached down and unraveled the package. The cloth was, as expected, the cloak but, it wasn’t what Felix had expected. It wasn’t sheer black or torn and frayed at the bottom. It was actually more of a steely blue with gold filigree forming a floral pattern on the inside and seemed like a normal, ankle length hooded cloak with a high collar.

[? - Ancient] The Reaper’s Favourite Cloak

Personal Note: With a couple of simple but incredibly useful abilities all wrapped up in a cloak with timeless style, this remains my personal favourite cloak to this day; despite the fact that I haven’t worn it in a long time.

Passive Abilities:

Weather Phasing: No matter the conditions outside the cloak, the inside will always keep you at a comfortable temperature.

Forgotten: Blend in with the crowd and be forgotten. All who notice you will pay you no mind and soon forget you entirely so long as you do nothing too memorable.

Guarding: Though nothing particularly strong or powerful, slow, weak, uninfused attacks may be completely ineffective.

Huh.

The closer Felix looked, examining the cloak for himself, the more he realized it was rather odd. The cloak itself gave off some kind of feeling of deeper meaning that he pinpointed as being based in anima but otherwise couldn’t get anything out of. It also used mana but, not in any way he was familiar with. Even with his absurd mana control and senses, he couldn’t really tell what was going on other than the fact that he detected some mana at all.

This cloak… is not from System era times, is it? Maybe even a different universe. That identification definitely wasn’t written by The System I’m used to. It also doesn’t have a grade but is that because The System can’t grade it or won’t? I think… I’m not going to feed this to Reaper’s Mantle right now at least. It’s too unique and not only can I not replicate it, I don’t even understand it.

Considering just how little he understood about it, Felix decided he would put it in the Kryptos Repository instead of his Soul Space. Reaching down towards the band, he chose an open rune at random and as soon as he did, even before touching the band, it spun into place.

Oh shit, soul bound means it grows. Oh man, even more upgrades.

Spinning the rest of the bands into place-now mentally which was significantly faster-the opening was actually projected in front of his hand instead of within the band. All he had to do was reach forwards and push the cloak inside.

Felix knew, even before touching any of them, none of the books in front of him were encoded or written in creeping ink or anything. He had already scanned them all into his library without issue. Reaching for the one on the top, the Personal Research Notes, he flipped through just to confirm.

He couldn’t help but skim through the contents but found himself increasingly disappointed as he did so. The research contained within was focused on cultures, religions, planets, climates, geography and solar systems surrounding various civilizations. This was followed by theories on how this affected the growth and creations of those civilizations.

I feel like I was misled…

He stored the book in the Kryptos Repository just to be safe then picked up the next one. The Soul Structure Schematic & Research Compendium was exactly what he was hoping for, a compendium of research notes and soul schematics from various individuals. None of them were signed by The Reaper but even still, there were things in the notes that Felix had never even imagined.

Finally, the Soul Harvesting Manual was interesting but not as insightful as he had hoped. If he had only gotten the Research Compendium, Felix himself could have written a decent chunk of the manual. It was formatted in a more readable, direct and understandable way but that didn’t really help Felix much.

The rest of the book was more interesting though and contained sections on preserving convictions and intent from harvested souls, reading experiences and various details about souls in general. All of it was designed so the reader could get the most from harvested souls which was more than welcome in Felix’s mind.

He stored everything in the Kryptos Repository for now, the scans in his mind more than sufficient for the time being and walked into his Pocket Home. He left Nova to wonder around and closed the portal behind him.

Somewhat sure no one was watching, Felix pulled out Eretheas and examined how it had been upgraded. After that, he completely overhauled his Persona Body and moved over most of the changes from his real body’s evolution. He kept some differences like the mana channels in his Persona Body but otherwise, they were biologically, very similar.

Switching back over, he ran through everything that had changed for the rings and laughed to himself. For the time being, the massive increases to the capacity of the two rings was more than welcome. Everything else though, he wouldn’t really be able to make use of for a while.

After a few minutes of testing things out, Felix decided he was wasting too much time and so he hid them and hopped back out of his Pocket Home.

Finally opening the portal back to the event, Felix stepped through with his kitten bounding ahead of him into the desert. Before diving into anything, he quickly opened a portal back to the vault to check on his newest creation.

A brief conversation with Zero miming to Felix later and he realized it was a terrible idea for him to bring Zero out into the world yet. Zero hadn’t magically become a System leveler so he had no class, race or profession. On top of that, he still wasn’t used to using all the random abilities his body gave him. The blueprints Felix had gave him were helping a lot though.

He was currently training the forms from a book Felix had scanned at some point with sword forms but still wasn’t very good with them. Once he was more accustomed to everything, Felix would bring him to a hunting ground or something but it wasn’t time for that yet.

First things first, Felix flew back towards the Rakyt city that he suddenly realized he didn’t know the name of. Nova ran across the sand below him, diving through dunes and kicking up a huge cloud of sand behind her. It was an odd sight seeing a kitten running at ridiculous speeds and hitting massive sand dunes hard enough for them to essentially explode.

As they approached, Felix saw a pair of participants standing a kilometer or so outside the city. They seemed to be doing something in the sand itself or below it. No Rakyt convoy approached to greet them though and Felix didn’t really pay them much mind other than identifying them.

[C - Epic] Flesh Fiend: Ozrach (Lvl 1426)

[C - Epic] Rakshasa: Muzestad (Lvl 1398)

Huh.

Zipping past, and swerving a wide berth around so Nova didn’t bulldoze them, Felix flew right up to the gates of the city. The magical weapons throughout all whirred to life as he approached but stopped targeting him after a brief moment.

The gates opened a few minutes later and dozens of Rakyt guards all walked up to surround and escort Felix inside. Felix had been expecting looks, it came with the territory of being the only non Rakyt in the city but, these were different. He quickly realized they weren’t actually looking at him but rather, at Nova.

Once the gates closed behind them, two thirds of the guards resumed their duties while the rest, served as Felix’s escort. They led him over to Arysha whom he spoken to before.

[C - Legendary] Rakyt Savant: Arysha (Lvl 1698)

Why can I see race and rarity now? Is that from the evolution or me upgrading my identify skill and… it was delayed? No, that doesn’t make sense. Weird.

Felix nodded and offered a shallow bow which only seemed to confuse the Rakyt around him, “Arysha.”

She nodded and her initial confusion quickly washed away, “Halwaro Felix.”

I take it The System decided not to translate that… for some reason?

Felix didn’t even try to return the same greeting, “You have any questions for me before I head out?”

“Ah, yes. Follow me.” She led him towards the same large building in the distance he had been to before. On the way, she turned to him, “Halwaro is Rakyt word. You are stronger now. You have changed. You look notable. This is to be celebrated.”

Felix nodded, “I see. Well, thanks.”

I look different? I guess I should get a mirror or something and check.

She nodded, “You have creature with you. What are they?”

Why is the translation here so weird. Is there language really that different?

“This is Nova, my familiar.”

She nodded, “Yes. Familiar, I know this. I have familiar also. What are they?”

“She’s a sprite. Changes forms but she seems to like this one.”

Arysha shook her head, “Yes. What is name of creature. This… form?”

“Oh, a cat?”

“Cat. I see.”

Felix shrugged, “Technically this is based on a panther. I don’t think she’s ever actually eaten a cat before. They’re all felines though so, basically the same thing.”

“What is panther? and feline?”

Felix turned to Nova, “Panther form.”

Nova meowed at him then hopped off his shoulder and morphed into a panther. Instead of her old panther that was huge, she was smart enough to transform into one only a meter or so long. Big enough to convey the idea without being too threatening or ridiculous.

“That’s a panther.”

Arysha stared at Nova with wide eyes and looking around, Felix saw the guards all had similar reactions to her. They didn’t draw their weapons though which he was grateful for.

Turning back to Nova Felix conveyed to her the image of a lion. It took a bit of back and forth mentally for her to get a clear enough picture but once she did, Felix had to say she was exactly what he remembered them being, “This is a Lion, also a feline.”

Felix had Nova show off a few more forms before they finally made it to the chamber with the waterfall and giant ball of mana. The guards ended up having Nova run through all kinds of different enemies she knew the forms for while they all waited for Arysha to return with their questions.

The questions were mostly pretty innocuous once more and this time, there were even some item requests in the mix. Felix was happy to answer the questions especially since it netted him a couple hundred inventory points.

Once he was done there, he and Nova made their leave and flew back out into the desert a short distance. Felix opened a portal to a random spot near the mountains as Nova was dying to go and eat everything. She wasn’t cursed anymore but it seemed the desire to consume remained.

He let her loose then headed for the nearest Ancient Ruin quest himself.

The quest was another dungeon except this one, Felix wasn’t the first to reach. The first person bonus message was missing but the quest was still in his quest list so he knew he would at least get the inventory points.

Within the dungeon, Felix had expected something similar to the last dungeon he had completed but it was completely different. The inside of the dungeon looked just like the outside with vast fields of green in every direction except there was also a small structure behind him. It was about the size of a pylon and seemed to just be a placeholder.

The entire dungeon was a simple scenario, protect the pylon from waves of beasts. The waves started at 10 level 1200 beasts then grew progressively until they reached 40 beasts at which point they dropped back to just 10 beasts but went up in level by 100. Once the waves reached level 1900, they finally hit Epic rarity instead of Special and the waves were much smaller.

Felix didn’t have much trouble at all clearing out the waves as they were normal creatures. His stats alone made it so he could probably have sat there and punched them all to death, though it would have taken forever.

Once the waves were dealt with-their bodies vanishing much like the last dungeon-Felix was disappointed to obtain only 1000 inventory points and a bunch of low grade creature hides. On top of that, the creatures were too weak to really push him so he only gained 6 class levels.

Damn. Might not even be worth it to complete dungeons if I’m not first.

Sighing, Felix accepted the screen before him to leave the dungeon. His surroundings didn’t change at all, the entrance to the dungeon being a small 1 meter tall pillar in the middle of a field. The one thing that did change though, was that someone suddenly appeared in front of him.

[C - Divine] Zeraxes (Lvl 1326)

A Divine race? Cool.

Upon appearing in the field, Zeraxes immediately noticed Felix though he didn’t approach, “Felix.”

Felix responded in a similarly blank tone, “Zeraxes.”

Suddenly, a meter long beam of lightning appeared in Zeraxes hand and Felix’s heart started racing. It wasn’t like captured lightning, it was like the lightning was actively bridging two invisible points in the air with a fairly direct path. There was one core bolt that was thicker and brighter along with secondary bolts that forked off and only sometimes rejoined the main bolt.

Zeraxes looked very seriously at Felix, “Have you sided with a faction yet? Edras… by chance?”

Felix quickly shook his head, “Nope, still… neutral? I guess.”

Zeraxes nodded slowly then a moment later, at a normal speed as his divine bolt vanished, “Good to hear.”

He offered a wide smile as he walked over to a more conversational distance, “You find anything particularly interesting so far?”

Felix shook his head, “Not really. This is the second dungeon I’ve completed. I’ve been a bit busy with my evolution.”

“Oh right, I forgot you were one of the only D grades. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

Zeraxes seemed both genuine and friendly which wasn’t really what Felix was expecting considering the first impression he had gotten back in Group Combat, “You planning on joining an alliance?”

Felix shook his head, “Nope. I’m more of a solo kind of guy.”

“Alright fair enough. I mean, me too but… having a properly fortified cache and sharing information is useful. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m going to team up for dungeon runs or anything. What would even be the point? But… not having to worry about my own vault is pretty sweet.”

Felix nodded, “Yeah, fair enough.”

“If you change your mind, you might want to do so soon and join us, the Archon alliance. You still have a dozen dekads or so but… once the actual fun starts, I can’t guarantee we’ll take anyone in, you know possible spies and all that.”

“I appreciate it.”

“In the meantime, want to check out what we’ve got so far? We’re setting up shops and stuff so you can trade the shit you don’t want. You can also buy things if you’re interested. I’ll also update you on all the dungeons we’ve found and we can sync up our maps.”

Felix nodded, “Actually yeah, that’d be great. I’d like to avoid already completed dungeons if possible.”

“I hear you on that, me too. Let me just clear this one real quick since I’m already here then you can join me through the portal back. Shouldn’t take long.”

Felix nodded in affirmation and Zeraxes slapped the pillar, instantly vanishing. After less than 10 seconds had passed, he reappeared and smiled to Felix, “Alright, ready to go?”

Felix frowned, “Wait… are the dungeons time dilated?”

Zeraxes laughed, “No, nothing like that. There’s actually a trick to these kinds of dungeons.” Zeraxes leaned in just a little, “The System never shows you the option, but you can ask to just send all the waves at once.”

Felix’s eyes went wide, “Really?”

“Yeah, makes it way more bearable.” Zeraxes pulled out some kind of hand sized cylinder and pressed the button on top of it causing a portal to appear before him.

He stepped through and Felix followed just a few moments later, after checking to be mostly sure it wasn’t some kind of trap. The fact that he saw hundreds of people running around on the other side helped his comfort level a lot.

Stepping through the portal, Felix was pretty sure they had stepped directly into the middle of a mountain or something. All the walls were carved stone but he saw some natural light from a room behind him which had windows. None of that surprised him. It was logical to carve out a cave in a mountain, it was a fast way to make a structure.

What was surprising, was how massive the area was. He had seen hundreds of people wandering around and there were countless rooms and halls he couldn’t see the end of as he walked through. Zeraxes wasn’t too hard to follow as he walked directly where he was going, letting everyone else move to avoid him. All Felix had to do was walk in his wake. As they walked, Felix was continuously looking around and marveling at how quickly they had built up such a massive complex.

First they headed into a map room where Zeraxes gave Felix permission to sync his map. They had already found everything he had, including the Rakyt main city so there was no point in Felix holding anything back. The most useful part for Felix, was that the dungeons they knew about were marked and the ones that had already been completed were coloured differently.

After that, he led Felix into a huge open area with hundreds more people bustling about.

“This is the market. Currency is Inventory Points or most people are willing to trade.”

There were stands and small shops all over, some of which were literally an individual with a sign. Felix was pretty surprised there was anyone who had anything to sell already and decided he would take a brief look.

Zeraxes turned to Felix and slapped him on the shoulder, “Alright, this is where I leave you. I’m headed out again to see if I can’t find more uncompleted dungeons. Feel free to wander about. Oh, and head down that hall or out a window if you don’t have your own way out already.”

“Sure, thanks.”

Zeraxes smiled and nodded once then ran off down a hallway.

Felix only wandered through the market for a few minutes. A lot of what was being sold were enchanted items, scrolls and tablets. Some of them opened portals, others created shields and some were even bombs. The only items for sale that were actually from the event were a few raw materials here and there and a few fairly lame dungeon rewards. Nothing Felix was particularly interested in.

He didn’t really have anything else he wanted to do so he recorded the coordinates in the compound then flew out of the nearest window.

As soon as he left though, he was surprised again as passing through the outermost rooms, he saw reinforcements being added on all the outer walls. Metal plates and beams behind them not to hold the ceiling up or keep the cave stable but evidently to protect from attacks.

Felix wasn’t exactly sure what they were defending against but on the outside too, he saw multiple holes along the mountain that weren’t just windows. His mana senses once again lit up near many of the holes solely because of how much mana was being stored near them.

It’s like a bunker. Makes me wonder what the hell they’re protecting against but I guess I’ll find out eventually.

Felix flew out a short distance then opened a portal to the border of the land the Archon alliance had explored. He really wanted to find more dungeons that no one else had completed.

Once through, he summoned Erevos so he could focus on other things instead of flying.

He had been interrupted when he left the last dungeon so he didn’t get a chance then to check his inventory. He was pretty sure the low grade creature hides wouldn’t take up too much space but if they did, he was willing to dump them now.

Checking his inventory though, he frowned. His points seemed way higher than they should have. He had 4000 extra points that he couldn’t account for. There was no log he could find and he was pretty sure no one had paid him so the only other explanation was that he had accidentally completed a quest.

Opening his quest screen, he switched it to only show completed quests and saw two gathering quests that he definitely didn’t accidentally complete. He just didn’t have time to waste gathering resources. It was only a few seconds later when another gathering quest completed right before his eyes that he realized what was happening.

How did I not realize sooner. I am an idiot. Anyways, thanks Nova.

Felix sent a quick sense of gratitude down their bond then focused back on the flight and gunned it.

His focus was quickly tested though as Grim spoke up in his mind, _I wonder if this is how inventories in the tutorial worked. A hidden points system based on quests completed. That’s why yours seemed infinite.

Felix slowed down a little as he answered, You thought it was soul spaces, didn’t you?

I did. This seems more likely now though.

The next dungeon he found was a section of the forest that formed a maze. He tried burning the trees down but they quickly regrew making it impossible for him to cheat that way. The canopy was also, unfortunately dense and similarly impenetrable. Luckily he was pretty quick and so he ran down the various corridors and mapped things out in his mind.

That quickly proved to be largely useless however as he realized-as soon as he doubled back from a dead end-that the maze was moving.

In another situation, Felix might have found the whole puzzle of the dungeon fascinating but in this event, he was pressed for time. Eventually he decided to just follow the strongest beasts until he found the exit. He still wasn’t the first though so all he ended up with were some rare plants and more inventory points.

Popping out of the dungeon he continued heading outwards into undiscovered territory and during the flight, he finally took a look at his energy reserves.

His energy core was now hindering him rather than helping him now that his endurance had reached ridiculous levels. He figured he could continue to suffuse energy into his mana core and try to compress it further but he was happy with the current ratio. It seemed to suit his body well and he didn’t want to mess with it.

Instead, he decided to revert some of the changes he had made. The core would still exist, energy still suffusing his mana core, but his body was more effective for storing energy at this point. In addition to his energy core, Felix refilled his body with its own energy.

As soon as he did though, he almost felt sick. It was like he was extraordinarily bloated or his cells were rejecting the energy. It was odd because he still always had his Core Energy Infusion buff active, passively increasing his stats, so there was no reason for them to suddenly be rejecting energy. Despite all his logical reasoning, Felix couldn’t debate his cells so he sighed and set thing back to the way they were.

The hell is going on. Guess I just need to experiment with it more.

Instead of staying low to the ground and watching his available quest list though, Felix decided to gain more distance from everyone else. Once he was satisfied with how far he was, he dismissed Erevos and flew just over the tree line.

The trees below him were spread out far enough that he could see the forest floor just about everywhere he looked which he hoped was enough for him to pick up nearby quests.

He flew by some interesting looking flowers, herbs, trees with fruits and various other resources but largely ignored them.

One flower in particular stood out to him though, not because it was interesting to him but because it was in the process of being harvested. Felix managed to spot 5 participants in total, two that were working together to harvest the flower and three that were standing guard.

He had no intention of bothering them, simply annoyed he still had some distance to go if he wanted to find undiscovered lands. As soon as they spotted him though, shortly after he spotted them, the three guards moved into action.

One of them disappeared by literally walking into a tree and the other two leapt up into the canopy. Felix started to veer away from them but a mass of vines shot up from a nearby tree and nearly ensnared him.

What the shit. Leave me alone.

Felix tried to swerve and dodge them and made it as painfully obvious as he could that didn’t want to fight. He managed to gain a bit of distance but was quickly stopped short by one of the guards leaping up at him.

It was a ridiculous leap that should have been impossible, especially considering the plate armor made of bark and wood they had equipped.

Alright fine, fuck you guys.

Pulling out Grim in one hand, Felix dropped a persistent Fire Ball on the leaping guard’s head. It was a direct hit because they had no air maneuverability and once it exploded, it simply remained, stuck to their head. That sphere of fire would follow them around for a few seconds.

While they dealt with that, Felix phantom stepped in the opposite direction and flew straight at the flower. He didn’t even want the damn thing but they did and he was hoping that meant they would bunch themselves a little closer together.

As soon as he landed-dropping a Lightning Storm directly onto the harvester-Felix snatched the flower from their grasp. They were too busy cradling it and not paying attention to their surroundings to actually stop him. He was more than willing to ruin the treasure by yanking and stowing it while they were still trying to harvest it. As he stowed the flower in his inventory, his hand followed through on the movement to shoot forwards and he actually punched the harvester in the face.

It did more than he was expecting-which still wasn’t much-but did seem to somewhat stun them, if only from the surprise of the action. The best part though, was that it was incredibly satisfying and made Felix feel much better.

The Lightning Storm hit him too a few times but, his cloak enchantment simply redirected those hits.

Knowing he was dropping into melee range of an unknown combatant, Felix had already prepared a Force Explosion spell that he immediately released. It exploded outwards, ripping up the forest floor and throwing the harvester back a dozen meters. He dropped the Lightning Storm spell, siphoning back the left over mana because the spell wasn’t needed anymore.

One of the guards that had chased him, the vine summoner, dropped from the canopy and drove both of her arms into the ground below her which sank down to her elbows. A moment later, Felix felt something within the ground. He felt mana being channeled into the ability but, they were too far and it was being converted into something else very quickly so he had no hope of simply destroying the skill.

She was too late though as Felix’s other spell just finished casting and he stepped through the portal before her skill had any effect whatsoever.

Felix stepped through one more portal-to obscure his location and make him harder to follow-back into his cache then switched over to his Persona. If he was going to be attacked, he might as well start building a reputation. His stats were also currently quite a bit higher in his Persona as his bodily stats all got a decent buff in the larger, stronger body. His mental stats suffered but at the moment, his Intelligence at least, was his lowest stat even in his main body.

Walking around as Arthur was no real detriment to him as he could switch back within the dungeons whenever he wanted.

Felix opened a portal to a different border this time and headed in a completely different direction towards more unmapped land.

As Arthur, he was stopped a couple times by other participants but none of them outright attacked him. In fact, they both actually tried to recruit him. Felix just grunted then ignored them and moved on. He didn’t want to build a reputation as a savage that would attack people at random, that would have been too problematic.

He managed to hit 8 more Ancient Ruin Dungeons before he decided to head back for Solo Combat. He had decided to skip Soul Manipulation because they were still being lectured on defensive formations and occasionally offered demonstrations. None of that was particularly valuable to Felix though so he had no reservations skipping it entirely.

After smashing through a few duels in Solo Combat solely because of his massive jump in stats, Felix headed back into the event. He continued to wear his disguise as Arthur while he flew around which proved prudent just a few days in when he was actually forced to kill two participants.

He honestly didn’t intend to kill anyone at first, he was planning on building a reputation of being ruthless and greedy simply by fighting people for treasures.

Flying over a barren field of stones and keeping himself low to the ground so he would get as many quests as possible, Felix was barely paying attention to his surroundings with his mind elsewhere. Suddenly, a net of massive chains ripped out of the ground and surrounded him, his body slamming against them to arrest his momentum.

As he was pulled backwards, he summoned Eretheas and began swinging against the chains. He didn’t have much leverage, certainly not enough to break the chains though he wasn’t entirely confident he could have broken them even with leverage. He simply resisted to put on a good show and bait his enemies.

From within two larger stones, a pair of participants burst out completely covered in metallic armor. Their armor was nothing like plate though and actually looked like a suit of metal that was liquid around the joints and solid between them.

[C - Epic] Morak: First Daughter of the Forge (Lvl 1412)

[C - Epic] Kroessam: First Cousin of the Forge (Lvl 1458)

The chains wrapped around Felix twisted unnaturally and contorted indicating they had some kind of control over them but they weren’t focused on it. The two of them were busy readying what looked like a large Iron Maiden. Felix wasn’t actually sure Arthur’s body would even fit inside of it but they were obviously keen on trying.

Felix continued to struggle against the chains and desperately tried to smash through the links but it quickly became obvious he wasn’t going to break out of them. As Felix was dragged into the torture device, just a meter away from being skewered, neither of the Forge kin hesitated.

He had no intention of surrendering but he got the notion that even if he did, they wouldn’t have accepted that.

The chains grew taught as they constricted Felix’s body and suspended him between the two halves of the iron coffin as it was slammed shut. The two halves thumped together with a metallic clang and released a plume of black smoke, almost shadow even, into the air above them. It was subtle enough that the two Forge levelers didn’t even notice it which was lucky for Felix who swung Eretheas into one of their necks as hard as he could.

Just before Eretheas hit however, despite neither of them having noticed him, the metal around their body swelled outwards. Liquid metal slowed the swing enough for the solid plate beneath to stop the attack. He still managed to slam the man’s head into the coffin in front of him just from the momentum but it was a far cry from the effect he had hoped for. At the same time, the liquid metal began wrapping itself around Eretheas and Felix grunted as he yanked on the axe to no avail.

He sighed and switched places with a new shade behind the woman giving himself a few moments where they were left looking for him. At first he wasn’t sure how to get through their armor but then he had a thought and decided to activate a couple of the new abilities his rings had gotten when he evolved.

First, he released Devouring Aura which was the third of the three skills his Soul Devouring Ring had gained. It effectively radiated all the blood lust he had infused into his Persona’s soul along with the wails of the souls he’d previously harvested. The stronger his Persona’s soul and the more souls he harvested, the stronger the aura.

Immediately the two of them flinched and their armor hardened. Though it took the slot of an attack skill on his ring, it wasn’t going to ever really do any damage. It did however put pressure on those around him at very little cost to him. It seemed to use the same energy, or rather strain him in the same way, creating the spark of life did. It was not nearly as bad though and he figured he could realistically maintain the aura indefinitely.

After the aura, he summoned two shades and began swinging into the two metal encased participants. While neither of his shades got anywhere with normal swings, Felix had engulfed his own axe in an aura of extreme cold.

The man having recovered from smacking his head spun on the real Felix while whipping a dozen chains around him, completely obliterating the two shades before they had a chance to regenerate. Felix grabbed two of the chains as they flew towards him and immediately pulled on them before the man could react.

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He drove his foot into Kroessam’s chest which turned into an array of spikes at the last moment. Blood gushed out of Felix’s foot for all of a few moments before stopping completely. Felix grunted and yanked his foot free, as the gushing blood encased the injured foot in a crimson greave. Once it was covered, he kicked again, this time crushing the spikes with a loud screeching sound as the greave blocked the spikes entirely.

Two metal spikes ripped through Felix’s torso a moment later and he summoned and switched places with a shade as soon as he felt the pain. By the time he reappeared, his torso had been covered in a skin tight crimson plate that covered both the wounds and most of his chest.

Checking his health, Felix had already lost 20% of his health but he smiled wickedly. Armor of Blood effectively made him immune to bleeding as it instantly inflicted a portion of the bleeding damage he would have taken anyways then used the blood to form armor around him. The armor’s durability scaled with his vitality which, in his Persona, was ridiculously high.

Armor of Blood paired synergized with one of the other skills he had, Crimson Rage because as he lost health, his strength increased by the same percentage. Currently, he had 20% increased strength.

Swinging Eretheas into the the man’s back, Felix empowered the cold field on the axe head and increased the axe’s weight as far as he could while still being able to swing it. The first time he had gotten near these two, he had felt the heat radiating off of them even though there was no distinctive red glow of molten metal.

That had discouraged him from trying to cook them alive with fire. Even though molten metal didn’t have the greatest conductivity, it would still inevitably redirect the Lightning around them. That left cooling the armor down to trap them.

Driving the axe into the armor, the same liquid metal swelled upwards to slow his strike but this time, only a small layer was created as the rest froze solid in a small crater. Eretheas slammed into their back and sheared at least a few inches into their armor.

Felix wrenched the axe backwards and upon seeing blood splatter out of their wound, activated the third of his Blood Ring’s abilities, Crimson Slaughter.

Technically it was an execute ability, doing more damage to a target the more severe their wounds were but Felix was curious and wanted to test it. Activating it, he didn’t see anything happen but a satisfying squelch sound released from within the armor and Felix’s smile grew.

It hadn’t killed the man but the spikes of blood had definitely done damage.

Lifting the axe, Felix blocked metal spikes that twisted like tendrils and swapped places with a new shade behind the woman. She had her hands on the metal coffin and chains and was in the process of melting them down to form whatever she wanted which, was almost exclusively spikes.

As Felix swung down from a slight jump, she twisted all the metal under her control to block the axe but Felix’s cold aura froze it all solid. As the swing descended inevitably upon her, a wall of frozen steel was created on either side of the swing, completely unable to approach it.

She screamed and activated an armor skill that completely hardened her armor in an instant. Along with the aura of cold around the head of the axe, the armor completely shattered as Eretheas hit it. The shards were like glass and completely tore up her body as Eretheas continued through and sheared off her arm.

The man screamed this time, “How did you even get into this stupid event!” and pulled out a scroll but there was no way Felix was letting that happen so he switched places with another shade and ripped all the mana out of the scroll. He was hoping any of the stories they told would claim his aura suppressed abilities or something but didn’t worry about it too much.

Once he figured things out a little more, he would provide Tekragoraxius with a run down of his abilities and she would craft the rumors for him.

Bringing the axe close to the man to freeze his armor, Felix punched him in the face then slit his throat finally activating Crimson Slaughter one last time. He activated both rings, but made sure Soul Reap was disabled, to regenerate his health and start stacking Empowered Spirit. Much like Crimson Rage, Empowered Spirit buffed Felix’s agility for a short time after harvesting a soul.

The buff didn’t last long but it stacked and refreshed every time he harvested. As the woman now pulled out some kind of enchanted item, Felix threw Eretheas at her head then teleported to it as soon as it reached her, following through with the rest of the swing and removing her head.

He harvested her too, ensuring their possessions ended up in his Soul Space then sat down and meditated to restore his missing health. An ominous System screen stopped him short though.

Multiversal Law

True killing is against the established laws of the multiverse and results in harsh punishment. As this is your first infraction and you have yet to be informed by The System of the laws, your punishment will be reduced.

Punishment:

Loss of levels: 10 x People Killed = 20.

As this loss would put you below the threshold for an evolution, you will gain negative levels and a lock on your abilities. You will have to regain the levels to remove the lock. You will also be removed and banned from the current even-

What… I know I kind of forgot about the whole true killing thing in the heat of battle and being hurt and… Why isn’t it finishing?

Multiversal Law: Overriden.

Punishment:

Your name will appear in red when identified and for every participant you kill you will gain 1 stack. Every one you true kill, you will gain 10. As long as your name is red, you cannot surrender. Killing you will result in massive rewards scaling with the number of stacks you have obtained.

Wait… huh. I wonder if that carries over to my actual body…

Global Quest: Massacre

Some participants have started killing and some even true killing others. These participants have been marked in red upon identification, are unable to surrender and have gained stacks based on their kills which will appear next to their name. These stacks represent their bounty and upon killing them, you will receive rewards:

1+ Stack: 10,000 Inventory Points per stack.

20+ Stacks: 25,000 Inventory Points per stack and access to the Event Trove.

100+ Stacks: A permanent buff within the event and all previous rewards.

Current Stack Leaderboard:

Arthur: 20

Oh man thank goodness it doesn’t say Felix.

Event Trove

The Event Trove is a shop from which resources, natural treasures, items, research, and other goods can be purchased from within the event. The accepted currency is Inventory Points only and to gain access, you must either be marked by the Global Quest: Massacre with a red name or kill someone with 20 or more stacks.

Wait, all you need to do to get access is to kill someone? Isn’t this kind of bloodthirsty? Event Trove.

Scrolling through the items in the Trove, Felix’s eyes went wide. Not only were there all kinds of natural treasures, metals, materials and other goods Felix expected but there was also research, constructs, schematics, skill manuals, class manuals and more. There were even a few of the System Cores for sale.

Some of the items cost millions of points but considering he had almost tripled his Inventory Points already, he definitely had hope.

This is kind of ideal for building Arthur’s reputation. As long as I don’t kill people in my real body, no one will know.

Felix quickly confirmed that was the case by checking his own identification in his Persona and in his real body. Seeing his level, he frowned. He hadn’t gained any levels from killing the two Forge participants and his real level was what he expected. His Persona though, seemed to display 1849 as his level.

I guess it’s based on stats or something? That’s why the guy was asking how I was in the event.

He considered for a few moments then decided to equip a title on his Persona too. He thought about equipping Warlord but he didn’t want to show off a title that had to do with commanding an army. Instead, he equipped Titan Killer: Legendary.

Unfortunately, Felix didn’t see many other participants for a while. He managed to hit 8 other dungeons before heading back for Group Combat, one of the few classes he wasn’t currently willing to skip.

Group Combat was much harder now that they were in the third class. He and Peace were still amongst the strongest through their stats alone but suddenly, it was like they had broken through some invisible threshold. It had been fairly easy to stand out as team players in the lower classes, the third class though was completely different.

Everyone in the class from what Felix could tell were very good at working with a team. They formulated plans, listened, worked together and found synergies between members.

While they hadn’t stood out as exceptional and didn’t get moved into the 2nd class yet, Felix and Peace also hadn’t been at the bottom thankfully.

Hopping back into the event Felix continued his search for undiscovered dungeons. He flew from dungeon to dungeon ignoring other participants unless they attacked him. He didn’t want to just kill everyone and paint a target on his back so he made sure he was ruthless but reasonable, only fighting back and killing when he was attacked first.

It wasn’t until a few dekads later when he finally found another core though.

The rest of the dungeon had been relatively basic and he hadn’t expected anything particularly interesting inside. It was actually a puzzle dungeon with no real monsters in sight but it wasn’t a research lab or anything, instead it was a house in the side of a cliff.

At first, the puzzles were fairly easy and mostly involved basic enchantment theory. Even non enchanters would have been able to solve it. A few puzzles in though, things shifted in a weird direction.

The puzzles started veering into things Felix had never thought of before. It started to split enchantments and pit them against each-other, like a cage fighting match. It wasn’t the effects that were fighting either, it asked him which enchantment would prevail when the enchantments fought for the same mana source.

After that, the enchantments were split in half and connected together creating a complete mess. Then he was asked which would win again. It was complete nonsense but Felix simulated the spell anyways and provided an answer.

The puzzles only got weirder from there and Felix actually found himself arguing out loud with the puzzles themselves. They were getting completely ridiculous and there was no way anyone other than him in this event could have solved them.

He got so sick of it that he ended up smashing his fist into the table and dispelling all the mana from the tests.

What is wrong with this stupid dungeon and why do I feel the burning desire to fight it?

As soon as he realized what was happening, Felix took a breath and manually calmed his soul. Once he had his soul blocking everything out, he was able to see clearly again and he looked at the table he had been completing the puzzles on.

It was more like a pillar rising out of the ground a meter or so into the air and looking at it, Felix realized it could probably be opened. He looked around the house and eventually found a small disc that acted as the key. Opening the pillar, he found another core.

[C - Cursed] Imitation System Core

A Core created to try and build an Imitation System. The core contains a large chunk of a mana computer bound with a cursed soul that uses biological matter for added stability.

I really need to be more on guard around these things. Maybe I shouldn’t revert from Arthur anymore and just use the Soul Cloak to defend myself.

Soul Cloak was the defensive ability on the Soul Devouring ring and protected against soul attacks. Until now, Felix hadn’t seen it as particularly useful for him at all but considering how subtle and annoying the cores were, he was starting to reconsider.

The issue was that while they didn’t necessarily hurt him, they influenced his actions and were so subtle he often didn’t notice them at all.

Felix also got a few packets of research from the dungeon as a reward for being the first which he scanned then stowed in his inventory. He popped back out of the dungeon and continued on to the next dungeon.

As much as he wanted to build up a reputation, there just weren’t enough people around for him to do so. He prioritized the dungeons over everything for the time being which meant he wasn’t hanging around the more heavily populated areas.

He already knew about the Archon’s fortress in the mountains and was fairly certain Edras had something similar in the direction of the druids he had stolen from. There were other alliances and compounds but none were as big or prominent as those two.

The Rakyt city had also managed to stay relatively untouched with-as far as he knew-Felix being the only one allowed inside. He really wanted to go back and build more trust with them so he could get his hands on all the information that had gone into their massive mana weapons. They were still early in the event though and it was more efficient to target dungeons.

Having spoken with Melody, it seemed as though no one else had been able to identify the cores yet but they knew the quest was a big one. Surprising Felix somewhat, the event hadn’t gotten much more brutal since the Global Quest announcement. He wasn’t at the top of the leaderboard anymore but he was still in 4th place.

The tension though, was palpable. Even outside of the event, Felix caught some students fighting with each-other before the planet ended up holding them back. It really was only a matter of time before something gave.

After just a few dekads of dungeon hunting and classes, he had finally harvested enough computer from his growth farms to completely back up his memories. He had quite a bit more than he needed too as he had manually worked on them during his evolution and improved the efficiency quite a bit. He still needed to relocate the farms to a controlled environment though with more room but, that was relatively low on the priority list for him.

Not only was he able to surpass his goal for Mark by over 50% but he also increased the size of his own computer in his mind. He didn’t touch it too much because he didn’t want to just make it massive but he did expand it into the fourth dimension by another 40%. Even with that increase, his Intelligence remained his lowest stat as most of the increase was directly siphoned into increasing his focus limit.

Using Grim as a pseudo Spell Book was still useful as even with 65 spell levels worth of focus, Felix found himself running out fairly often. Spells in general just got too complex and he was still limited to simple 2d spells that had either fractal channels or advanced combination nodes. He couldn’t really manage more than a single spell with both so he was still looking for other ways of casting more advanced spells.

Doing anything else to increase his spells at the moment was a waste in Felix’s mind so he headed back out into the event instead.

Flying out just past the most recent dungeon he had completed, not one with a core, Felix flew into a massive mountain range. The range was massive not only in that it stretched far in either direction but also in the mountains themselves. Judging by the angle of the mountains at the base, Felix was pretty sure he could see just a small fraction of them below the clouds.

He had to fly over them to continue so he pierced the cloud cover and gawked at the kilometers worth of mountain that rose up above them. Based on the height alone, it would have taken forever for him to fly over the mountains without Erevos so Felix decided to switch back from his Persona.

After some portal trickery to obscure the connection between him and his Persona, Felix summoned Erevos and cleared the first mountain 10 times faster than he could have alone. Once he passed the peak, Felix followed the curvature of the mountain down the other side into a valley so he could pick up any quests underground.

Smashing through the clouds and dragging a satisfying trail behind him, Felix immediately caught sight of something that he couldn’t resist stopping for.

Dismissing Erevos, Felix softened his landing from a few dozen meters away to make sure he wasn’t disturbing the scene before him then walked forwards to get a better look. A few of the others watching acknowledged his presence with a nod, a welcoming smile or a hand sign. They formed a loose circle though there weren’t enough people to actually complete a ring.

In the center of the crowd, confined to a ring painted on the ground a hundred meters in diameter, was Peace facing off against three robed participants. They weren’t fighting though, not at the moment. Peace was standing perfectly still and looking at each of the other three one by one all of which were also standing still.

Something was definitely happening though, Felix could feel it. Ripples or more accurately dense waves of intent were being released from the three of them. Felix caught glimpses of fights intermingled with a number of other random experiences such as one of feeding a small blue bird.

He had no idea what was happening but it was fun to watch nonetheless. After almost 10 minutes of just staring at each-other, the three robed figured stepped up and engaged Peace.

They all fought as martial artists, Peace holding off perfectly coordinates strikes and grabs almost with ease. It was clear to Felix that the three were incredibly skilled, possibly even masters of martial arts. Peace though, was still on a completely different level. Where they looked like they had mastered martial arts, Peace made it looked like martial arts were originally invented by observing him.

At first he was dancing and flowing through the fight, twisting and contorting his body like a snake. The next moment he was solid and stationary, an unbreakable and immovable wall. Then he was a strike of lightning, fast, flashy and overwhelming.

He switched from form to form effortlessly depending on what was necessary, sometimes his legs and torso following completely different philosophies.

Overall, Felix could barely catch a tenth of the fight as it was far too fast for him to follow and he wasn’t consistent with Reaper’s Perception yet. Even when he did manage to awaken the skill, for the brief few moments it activated, he had trouble following.

Ding You have become more proficient with the Class skill: [Legendary] Reaper’s Sense (Novice V => Novice VI)

The entire fight was over in less than a minute, the three opponents each bowing out one by one. As they walked out of the circle though, they looked tired but none of them were particularly hurt. It was evident to Felix that they were essentially sparring.

Peace spotted Felix as soon as the fight was over and waved at him. He hopped over in a flash of ridiculous movement, his hands clasped behind his back like a child, “Hey Felix! Whatcha doing here?”

“I was just flying over looking for dungeons. Are you guys sparring?”

One of the robed individuals smiled and tilted their head, “In a way.”

Felix snickered, “Why here though? Isn’t it kind of dangerous?”

Another one of the robed individuals, one of the ones who had just fought smirked, “Where else?”

Felix shrugged, “I don’t know, meet up in some city or something?”

Peace shook his head, “These are the disciples of Amatara. All of them are located in her star system. While I could visit… this is easier.”

“So what, you guys are like monks?”

One of them shrugged, “Sure.”

“Only kind of.” Peace shook his head and smiled, “More aptly, they’re soul cultivators. They all master their own martial art because it helps with soul cultivation and scales very well with a capable soul.”

Felix frowned, “What does that mean exactly?”

“They cultivate their souls.” Peace smirked knowingly.

“Right but they still have classes and races and all that, right?”

A bald man nodded excitedly, “I only have a profession. I’m a baker.”

Peace nodded, “You can give up your class in exchange for stats alone if you want. That’s sort of how beasts work. They don’t have skills or classes but they get way more stats.”

Felix nodded knowingly, “I guess stats scale very well with martial arts too since you aren’t really relying on skills much.”

Peace shrugged, “You could find skills that are useful and great, this was Amatara’s path though and most of them follow it.”

Felix nodded in understanding, “Well I guess I’ll leave you all to it then.”

One of the other robed individuals-a ponytailed woman-stood and stretched, “Would you like to try sparring?”

Felix resisted the urge to scoff and instead nodded politely, “Oh, I’m pretty bad at martial arts.”

They shrugged, “That’s only half of the duel.”

Felix looked to Peace who just smirked and tilted his head towards the ring.

Felix sighed and walked into it, the woman standing across from him.

He looked over to Peace for guidance and he stepped forwards next to Felix, “The first part of what we’re doing is trading experiences. For us martial artists, we send a wave of intent of our opening move. They respond with a fight they’ve won that they deem was similar to my move. They’re showing they can counter it.”

Felix frowned, “I felt other things too though when you sparred.”

Peace smirked, “We sometimes try to throw each-other off by switching things up. I send out feeding a bird, they respond with a pet they’ve had in the past.”

“I don’t understand. What the hell are the rules to this? How do you win?”

Peace chuckled, “For us, the goal is to figure out how to play the fight. If it were a real fight and we were evenly matched, this would be how we would try to gain an advantage over each-other. The goal would be to figure out how to play the fight, or if you should instead just run.”

Felix dipped his head slightly, “Kind of like beasts sizing each-other up and listening to their instincts?”

“Yes, precisely. Being soul cultivators though, we can manipulate each-other’s instincts. We can show off fake strength to either scare off an opponent-”

Felix nodded quickly, “Or bait them into fighting, got it. So this is based on that?”

“Yes. This evolved into a different kind of sparring. Instead of that mind game, we duel with our experiences. I show a fight where I fought someone strong. They respond with an experience that has something related in any way at all, maybe it’s baking a hard recipe. Whatever they choose, you must continue in the same vein and respond with a superior experience.”

Felix shook his head as he was even more confused than before, “So what the hell was the bird?”

Peace cocked his head slightly with a smile, “It was a duel of compassion.”

“Oh. Okay, I think I get it… in theory. How do you know when someone’s won?”

“For us, it’s whenever the person responding switches to a different, unrelated experience. For you, for now, you’ll both just say you surrender out loud.”

Felix nodded, “Okay let’s just… try and see I guess.”

The woman across from him nodded and started with a simple sparring match. The experience was loaded with all kinds of things. There was a sense of accomplishment from training her martial arts and a sense of comfort in practicing them. There was hardship and frustration from fighting the opponent who seemed to be an even match to her. There was pride, pain, fear, desire to win and conflict.

Felix chose the one that he thought he had the most experience with, conflict. He might have been able to win with his conviction through the desire to win or even the desire not to lose which was present but he didn’t know that for sure. It was possible their desire was greater even if he had the conviction because that didn’t necessarily make his desire any stronger. He also wasn’t sure how best to respond down that avenue.

Choosing the experience of fighting the griffin world boss, Felix tried to push out the experience in a wave like she did. It took him a few minutes of trying along with guidance from Peace and the others but eventually he managed a weak ripple. It was nothing like the shock wave Peace and the others were capable of but it conveyed the message.

She smiled and responded with a fight between her and her daughter. While the fight itself was less impressive, the sense of conflict was greater. Her daughter, while young, was completely determined to finally win and so she threw everything she had into it. The sense of conflict from the fight itself along with within her daughter and even within her as she wanted her daughter to win and succeed but she couldn’t let her win. It all compounded and Felix knew hers was greater yet.

The only thing that came to mind after that was the war between his city in the integration and the invaders. The experience technically wasn’t his but he had access to it through Grim and so, he projected it.

She nodded then responded with a fight she had observed. It was a weird sensation as it spanned hundreds of epochs but he still got the picture. It was the final fight, the culmination, between two territorial beasts that had fought each-other for hundreds of epochs. Finally, they had decided to fight against each-other to the end.

They continued to essentially volley experiences, going from the Lich to the Kraken until Felix had basically run out of everything he was ready to offer. He stood there wracking his soul for an experience when Peace tapped on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Give her something fighting The Endless Hunger. Not Telviras though.”

Felix looked at him like he was insane but Peace just nodded.

On the one hand, Felix trusted Peace to an extent but he really didn’t want to reveal that capability of his. Picking very carefully, he found an experience of him fighting it for control of mana from a large distance, early on in his training against it, not daring to dive into him actually touching it. He was more willing to lose the sparring match than reveal that. Also Peace had said fight, not touch so Felix wasn’t even sure he knew about that at all.

Sending out the experience as a ripple, her eyes went wide, “You win. You’ve mastered a minor peak already? So young…”

Felix turned to Peace, “What’s a peak?”

Peace just winked at him, “Curses.”

Turning to the rest of the crowd, many of them were wide eyed, some smirked and others were smiling and nodding. None of them seemed threatened, they were all impressed in a way. Some were disappointed in themselves that they hadn’t, others were simply happy for him.

Felix turned to the woman he had sparred against, “What does it mean to master a minor peak?”

She walked along with him out of the ring, “One of the planets under Amatara’s purview holds a mountain range. Each mountain in the range is kilometers apart to keep them isolated and each one has a path. Along the path there are curses embedded into pillars. As you climb, the curses grow in strength. Reaching the top is to master the curse and be unaffected by it. To be able to stand a meter from it and reject its influence entirely.”

Felix nodded, “You said minor?”

She nodded, “Hunger is technically a subset of another curse. I have yet to even climb an inferior peak, the tertiary ones.”

“Hunger is a subset of what?”

She looked at him with almost a reverent expression, “The curse of the future, Desire.”

So there are more?

One of the others in the crowd stepped forwards, “Would you be interested in further pursuing other peaks and soul cultivation in general?”

Felix turned to them and bowed his head slightly, “Yes. Very much so.”

They nodded with a smile, “Excellent. I will speak with my master.”

After that, Felix continued to spar a few times, losing every single time to various people. It turned out, being young was a severely limiting factor in a duel of experiences. Experiences from novels he’d read, movies and shows he’d watched helped a lot but they were no more than stop gaps for the early salvo.

An hour or so passed at which point Felix had decided he’d wasted enough time and left the ring. Before he could leave though, he was stopped by a robed man with perfectly spherical haircut, “You seek dungeons, yes?”

Felix nodded, “Ancient Ruin dungeons ideally.”

They nodded, “We will share our quest lists with you. We all came from different directions and met here so we passed by quite a few.”

Felix’s eyes went wide, “That would be awesome, thank you.”

The man nodded, “In return, Peace has mentioned you befriended the integrateds of this event, could you bring us to their city?”

“I can bring you to the city but they don’t let many people inside.”

He shook his head, “That is more than enough. We will speak with them ourselves.”

Felix looked to Peace for confirmation but he just nodded indicating his instincts were right and he could trust them. Felix nodded to the man, “Alright, I can do that.”

The man smiled then shared his map and quest list. Everyone else there proceeded to do the same and suddenly, Felix had a massive area revealed with hundreds of dungeon quests all around him.

He was almost salivating as he opened a portal just a few kilometers outside of the Rakyt city. They all stepped through one by one including Peace and left the mountain valley. Felix stepped through behind them because he decided the least he could do was make an introduction.

Bringing Peace alone with him, because Felix could only really vouch for him, Felix approached the city. Guards stopped them and made them wait while Arysha was retrieved and they met just outside the walls.

“Felix. You return with guest.”

Felix nodded, “This is Peace. He’s a… friend of mine. I won’t try and convince you to let him in or anything but I figured the least I could do was make an introduction as he and the group behind me just did me a huge favor.”

She nodded, “I see. You trust this Peace?”

Felix shrugged, “As much as I trust anyone right now.”

“We will speak with the Peace.”

“Perfect… Actually, quick question before I go, why can’t The System translate your language perfectly?”

Arysha shook her head, “Words are sacred. We shared one to show trust.”

Peace nodded, “You have System translation off and are learning System common yourselves?”

“Yes. It is as The Peace says.”

Felix nodded, “I see. Thank you for sharing a word with me then.”

“Our trust in Felix will be with Peace and this group as well. We are in need of opening up to others more now. We start with Peace.”

“Alright well, I’m off to hit the dungeons. Have fun.”

Peace nodded and turned back to Arysha as Felix flew away from the city. He once again spotted the fiend a short way outside of the city but they were alone this time, sitting in the sand and watching. He ignored them once again and portalled back to the valley.

With Amatara’s disciple’s maps and quest lists, Felix was able to clear more dungeons in a few days than he had in dekads of being in the event. The best part was that most of the map around the valley seemed to be pretty distant from the most populated area so he was the first to clear many of them.

Zeraxes trick with the waves was incredibly helpful as Felix started to abstract it outwards. In puzzle dungeons, he skipped puzzles so he could get right to the last three, just enough to give him context. If he skipped right to the last one, he found it difficult to figure out what was going on. The puzzle itself was doable he was just often missing the necessary information from the previous puzzles.

He found the best approach was to do the first couple then skip to the last three.

The combat dungeons were easy with his new found increase in focus limit. Using Grim let him get to level 100 spells which meant he occasionally weaved in some much more capable spells but even with his personal limit of 65, he could clear everything efficiently. He still couldn’t quite cast anything like Chain Lightning which required a complex form to retarget and split. His storms though, were more targeted and organized, his spells could bend in the air and his fire was hotter with much more advanced nodes.

Since he was pretty far from civilization, Felix didn’t bother with his Persona and only encountered a single other participant, a friendly who was mining.

Though it wasn’t nearly as much as he had gained in the previous grades he was still happy with the 77 levels he had gained in his class putting him at level 1,084 in [C - Ancient] Reaper. The puzzle dungeons though were doing wonders for his profession as they focused largely on enchantments and constructs so he managed to gain 118 putting him at level 1126 and bringing his Intelligence out of the gutter. It still wasn’t his highest stat, but it also wasn’t his lowest anymore.

He and Peace had also managed to move up to the second group combat class though just barely. They had both been able to feel a beast coming ahead of time and sprung into action. Their team had already captured the objective so Peace engaged the beast and held it off while Felix used spells to slow it down and push them along faster.

Felix and Peace then worked together to disengage the beast and they were moved into the 2nd class as a result.

In Solo Combat, Felix had started climbing upwards very quickly. They were still just dueling each-other but multiple times a class he was switched out with another student and put up against a harder opponent. It would take him a few duels to really get the hang of things with each one but after that, he won easily every time.

His stats helped a lot but more than that, he was crafting new spells all the time. Rarely did he design anything completely new in a fight but he came up with new solutions for everything he faced. Often that just meant he was piecing together components from a couple spells to accomplish something but it still made a huge difference. He was already confident that even without his evolution, he actually had a chance against the Ashound if he fought it again.

After that fight specifically, he had designed spells to counter everything it had done. He now knew spells that applied a lingering cold effect to a creature, a spell that specifically reduced friction very efficiently. He had also designed wind spells to specifically keep something scattered and away from him such as ash or spores.

Soul Manipulation got a lot better as they switched topics somewhat to strengthening their own and manipulating other’s souls. The defensive aspect of the course wasn’t useless, he was using it to create construct souls after all but for him, it wasn’t what he was looking for.

The event seemed to have somewhat calmed down along with the fights outside of the event having ceased completely which, was actually more ominous than reassuring.

None of that mattered for the moment as Felix memorized his location and hunted down his own familiar. It was the 20th dekad and Felix and Nova had an event to attend.

He had been initially somewhat excited to attend because of the exclusivity alone but now, Felix was dreading it. Felix had finally figured out how to make the constructs he wanted and had almost finished them. All he had to do, was put the finishing touches on and they would be complete. He couldn’t do that though, not until after the party.

Nova had been off on her own ever since they both evolved but through his soul bond and the steady stream of completed material collection quests, he knew she was thriving.

He found her stuck in the middle of a mountain she had made a good attempt at hollowing out. Felix had never seen her defecate but there was no way she could hold infinite matter within herself and as he walked inside, he realized the thick layer of dust was likely her excretion. It made it nearly impossible to see anything and Felix both encased his own head and started venting the area as soon as he arrived.

His head air sphere spell had been drastically upgraded with the use of just a few more spell levels that he was now willing to dedicate to it. It had a solid barrier, was harder to penetrate and was far sleeker around his neck and in the way it followed his head around.

Walking through, he eventually found Nova with her head seemingly stuck in the wall, hanging there completely asleep. Felix poked her and she popped out, meowing at him.

“We have a party to get to. Come on.”

She meowed again, disappointed she couldn’t stay then hopped into Felix’s robes.

Felix opened the portal back to his dorm right there and stepped through, heading straight for the portal room where he met Melody. Once there, they both headed through and used the teleportation hub to get right to Caesuriax’s willow. They didn’t have time to waste having Felix fly them there in Erevos, as fun as it would have been to do so.

Slightly worried about Nova, Felix stowed her in his Soul Space then followed Melody inside. Approaching the willow, she bowed to Caesuriax and offered him a simple, plain looking scarf.

[E - Common] Blue Scarf

Clothing designed to protect the neck from harsh weather conditions.

Felix looked at the item curiously but just a few seconds later, a group of vines gently shifted as a gentle breeze blew through the area. The vines fluttered over the scarf and wrapped themselves around, causing it to vanish. A few moments passed and the wind blew through once more causing the vines to pass in front of their faces revealing two boxes, one in front of each of them.

The boxes were about a meter by half a meter but only a few inches thick. Felix followed Melody in stepping forwards and kneeling in front of his box then carefully opening it up. The box itself seemed to be nothing special, just plain looking wood that wasn’t even finished. Inside the box however, the clothing before him was anything but plain.

Inside Felix’s box was a steely blue scaled hide with strategically located stripes of charcoal colored scales. Picking it up out of the box, he found that was just the outer coat which was collared and would hang down to his calves. There was also a pair of pants and a shirt that would go underneath it and a pair of shoes though made from a different leather, without scales.

[SS - Common] Arkinikamed’s Hide

A cloak made from the scales of Arkinikamed, the great prophet of the Ralken Drakene tribes during the 5th Integration.

Felix carefully folded it back up once he had seen everything and placed it back in the box to transport it. He had many questions like why he would be wearing Drakene hide to a Drakene event but he didn’t pose any of them now. Instead, he tried his best to mimic Melody’s reverence in carrying the box and bowing to Caesuriax before taking their leave.

Only once they were outside did he turn to her, “Traditional Drakene garb is literally their hides?”

Melody nodded, “Of course. Using the hides of great Drakene heroes to protect others is the greatest honor one can bestow, at least according to most Drakene’s culture. Anyways, who are you going to be wearing?”

Felix shrugged, “Arkinikamed, a prophet from the 5th integration. You?”

Melody smirked, “Nelarathiax. Yeah… Don’t ask me who either of them are, I have no idea. I’m sure they’ll be impressed though.”

“I hope so. Is it safe to stow this thing somewhere?”

Melody winced, “Let’s maybe just… not… just in case.”

“Okay… it’s kind of inconvenient, can I stick it in my Pocket Home for now at least?”

“Oh.” Melody’s eyes lit up, “Yeah, that would be fine. Stick mine in there too, will you?”

Felix nodded and opened the Pocket Home against the wall and walked inside. Melody followed him and Felix released Nova, no longer worried about her trying to eat the ancient time Willow.

He carefully placed the box on the ground, Melody dropping hers next to his then she walked over to the tree in the middle of the space.

“What’s this?”

Felix shrugged, “I don’t really know.”

Walking over and inspecting the tree himself, it was now actually a tree. The trunk wasn’t huge but it had surpassed Felix’s forearm in width and was almost the same thickness as his thigh.

I guess it needed more mana to grow.

Melody looked at him and cocked her head, “Where’d you get it and why are you soul bound to it?”

“Found it in an event actually. As for the soul bound thing, I don’t know, thought it might be a good idea.”

She frowned then crouched down and picked up a small crystal shard that was only a few hairs thick but was a few inches long now. It quickly snapped from the weight of itself being cantilevered over her finger but she held what was left with a frown, “Is the tree… creating these?”

Felix shrugged, “Seems like it. They were smaller before too, mostly just sand like.”

“Huh. You know, if these were cleaner, you could sell them for a lot of creds.”

Felix dropped to one knee to look more closely at the pile of crystals, “Wait, what? Why?”

She chuckled and carefully handed one to him. Felix, surprising himself even that he hadn’t even tried to identify them with his new skill yet, finally did so.

[E - Rare] Attunement Crystal

A crystal that imbues a specific attunement into mana that passes through it.

Felix looked at the crystal with wide eyes then immediately pushed some mana through it. The crystal lightly glowed and Felix pulled the mana back out the other side, finding it did in fact have an attunement now.

As far as he knew the attunement was complete nonsense, it was like static or white noise in the form of an attunement but at the same time, Felix thought it was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen.

Up to this point, Felix was pretty happy with having the tree simply be a weird decoration because he just wasn’t convinced it was useful yet. At some point in the future, he figured he would find a use for it. He thought a few times about asking someone what it did but just never really got around to it.

Now that he knew though, it actually solved a problem he had been thinking about for the last 15 dekads or so. It was going to require a lot of work, multiple machines and many spells to make anything usable from it, but it was incredibly promising. He would still have to wait for the tree to grow but considering its current growth rate, upgrading the mana engine suddenly jumped pretty high up on his todo list.

Just to be certain, he turned to Melody, “I didn’t even know these existed. Can I buy these for specific attunements?”

“Sort of. The reason attunement crystals aren’t used in many applications is that they always have some amount of noise in them. That means you need to clean the mana output from the crystals, the advantage is that they scale almost perfectly and have no issue with the amount of mana pushed through them. Unlike nodes which fall apart outside of specific ranges and have flow rate limitations.”

“So really clean crystals are super expensive then?”

Melody nodded fervently, “More expensive than even I can pay for. If you found one that was Epic or higher with a base attunement and say… less than 5% noise, my dad would have trouble paying for it.”

Felix nodded seriously as his mind began to race with possibilities, “I se-”

Spinning around and running towards the tower, Melody yelled out over her shoulder, “So this is your house?”

Felix sighed and yelled back, though it was completely unnecessary and both of them knew it, “Yeah”

He gave Melody the grand tour from the basement to the roof, Nova excitedly flying along, catching onto Melody’s jubilant mood.

Having seen everything, Melody sat on the parapet of the roof and looked outwards over the small island. After a few minutes of her simply looking out, Melody shook her head, “You created this thing, Mana Engine? In the Integration?”

Felix nodded, “Yeah. I haven’t touched it in a while but I figure now I could do a much better job. Imbue it with a soul and all that.”

She shrugged, “I mean, I’d hope so. The rate it gathers mana isn’t very impressive at all, Erevos is way faster for example. The fact that you made it from solid mana is kind of… silly though.”

He shrugged, “It was the easiest to work with and I didn’t have access to a forge or anything. Plus, I have no idea how to push metal freely into the fourth dimension.”

“You mean into the aether? I don’t know why that would be any harder but also, I don’t know that much about mana theory so…”

He nodded, “We have a few hours left until the party and I can portal us back to the teleportation hub so, you got anything else you need to do in Telviras?”

She shook her head and chewed on her lip thoughtfully. Felix shrugged and began designing things in his head. They sat like that for a few minutes-hours of designing in Felix’s Soul Garden-before Melody swung her leg over the parapet to turn to him, “If I sign a Soul Contract or a System Contract- or both, will you tell me everything?”

Felix just looked at her with a frown. He was only mildly annoyed his design work was interrupted because half of his focus was still working on it.

She sighed, “I can tell you’re holding things back. I can feel it every time you avoid something or lie.”

He shrugged, “I got a lot of secrets that I don’t know… how others would react.”

“I get that… I do, that’s why I’ll agree to whatever terms you want.”

Felix shook his head, “Why?”

“I just… I don’t know, I think you’d get it if you felt everything the way I do it’s just… I feel it. It sucks. I already told you why I approached you but since then… you aren’t just some fresh integrated who knows nothing. I mean, that’s exactly what you are but… A Child of the Reaper is personally training you. You were invited to Ascension Day, the first of any race other than Drakene based races ever… I think. Your Soul Garden is… beautiful and completely unbelievable at the same time. Your mana pool… There are just too many things happening. Despite all of that, you’re still… enjoying everything and aren’t caught up in yourself or politics or… ya…”

Felix sighed, “Not now. One day, maybe in a few terms. I’ll… think about it. Does that go two ways though, you’ll tell me anything I want to know?”

She rolled her eyes, “I’m not a loner and a recluse like you. I’d tell you pretty much anything now anyways.”

He cocked his head, “There aren’t any secrets you have to keep? Family secrets or anything like that?”

She shrugged, “There are secrets my dad would like me to keep, doesn’t mean I will.” She winked at him.

Felix sighed, “Alright, I’ll think about it.”

She nodded, “Thanks. In the meantime-” Her usual playful smile returned, “I think it’s time I taught you some things.”

Felix looked at her with a confused expression and she smirked, “No not that, as much as you might want that. Not Soul Manipulation either, it’s time you moved up a rank in Group Combat.”

“Uh, okay. How?”

“It’s actually really simple. All you have to do, is learn some support spells.”

Felix frowned, “I know some. I use them.”

She shook her head, “I’ll give you a list of the ones you need. Being a true support is very rare. You can also fight so if you just show you can fill that role too, you’ll get moved up instantly.”

Felix nodded slowly, “I’d rather not leave Peace behind though.”

She snickered, “You haven’t noticed? He’s holding himself back in every class you share to make sure he’s at the same level as you.”

“Oh. Actually… that… makes a lot of sense.”

She shook her head, “You are so oblivious some times.”

He shrugged, “It’s just people. Most of them are really….”

Melody nodded, “Dumb. Yeah. You trained yourself not to pay attention to them, I know.”

They spent a few hours with Melody giving Felix a very clear cut set of rules to follow in Group Combat. The spells she was having him make were fairly simple too and he was able to create them with his spare focus while he listened.

After that, they both relaxed in his Soul Garden, Melody reading and Felix doing the most relaxing thing he knew how to do, working. Mainly he worked on some of the new designs he had recently thought of.

Once the time had come, they both quickly got dressed in their new outfits. Felix’s was perfectly sized and incredibly comfortable, something he had come to expect from everything remotely magical in the multiverse at this point.

Looking over, Melody wore a long, sleek dress with no arms and a tight neckline. It furled out just a little around her calves and had a long slit up one leg. It was definitely more human than anything he had ever seen a Drakene wear but he figured that was likely the point. Her dress was also clearly made from a Drakene’s hide with black scales at the top that slowly graduated to a vibrant red at the bottom.

She took out some item and waved it over her head and face which made her hair into a fancy style. Felix just shook his head and sighed walking towards the exit but Melody grabbed his arm and stopped him, “Hold on. Take this.” In her other hand there was a pair of earrings.

The earrings were simple studs that would have barely been visible in his ears.

[D - Rare] Earrings of Style

A set of earrings that will apply a specific set of simple cosmetic modifications to the wearer. These earrings are incapable of altering face shape or drastically altering skin tone. They can however apply a specific hair style and other simple effects.

Felix sighed and equipped them, “Can we go now?”

She nodded, “Yeah, let’s.”

Nova pranced along between them and stayed as a kitten as per Felix’s insistence.

They stepped from one portal to another in a row finally ending up exactly where they had to be. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .