First, he opened a normal portal to Nova’s location as he would probably need her for this. He found his tiny kitten familiar in the middle of a massive empty sphere that looked like it had been exploded out of the ground.

Seeing it though, Felix only had one thought, I thought it would be bigger.

Hopping down to the bottom of the crater with Nova, Felix pulled out the portal mold he had created to simplify his job and carefully tuned a few parameters before filling it with mana and specifying the relative coordinates manually. As much as absolute coordinates had no apparent pattern, it was completely possible to calculate relative coordinates and with his mind and Mark working together, calculate them with a lot of precision.

A brief fantasy of falling directly on top of Talrain’s head flashed through Felix’s mind but he was dragged back to the present as Grim notified him of the quest screen changing

Quest: The Grand Design

…

Insert the cores into their respective receptacles. [3/256]

…

Hopefully three at once doesn’t mean he’s now where he needs to be or that he figured out some kind of method or pattern.

As the mana in the portal filled to just past half, realistically faster than it ever had before despite feeling slow and arduous to Felix, the relative coordinates shifted. Immediately grabbing hold, Felix fought back and pulled the coordinates where they needed to be but, despite his pulling with the entirety of his Mana Control and willpower, the coordinates were stuck.

Mark, where do these new coordinates point?

Mark responded instantly, already having calculated the answer, The exact center of this planet.

Oh shit, natural anchors. I wonder if that’s why the facility is where it is, to protect against portals?

Mark ignored Felix’s current thoughts and anticipated his next question, Having Nova dig down directly towards your target would take a few terms and exceed the available time in the event.

Okay, other options?

From the center of the planet, a portal cast would be subject to a significantly lesser pull from the gravity of the planet.

Wait but there isn’t just empty space down there, we can’t just portal down then up into the facility?

Correct. Based on the information we have available, it is most likely that the inner core of the planet is an orb of high grade, high density, super-heated material.

Felix’s eyes widened, I know what to do, thanks.

Ripping all the mana back out of the portal mold, Felix began making the necessary modifications to the mold with his Matter Control, falling back on Nova’s where precision was needed. Being able to communicate a complex design and having her understand and implement it nearly instantly was both a huge improvement and a miracle in Felix’s mind. He still remembered when Nova not only acted like a child but was limited to rough shapes and slow transitions.

With the portal mold modified, Felix began filling it with mana once again, this time not resisting it as the coordinates shifted and moved. As it filled, he and Nova flew back just over a kilometer from the crater, where he had targeted the portal’s opening, and Felix checked the quest screen.

Quest: The Grand Design

…

Insert the cores into their respective receptacles. [13/256]

…

Son of a bitch.

This new portal mold was very carefully calculated by Mark and verified by Felix’s brain to be the ideal size that he could maintain with his mana. They based their calculations on a lot of assumptions and estimations but made sure to adjust their margin of error accordingly. None of this would have been safe and therefore, possible, were Felix not significantly more proficient with spell forms from his time at Eramith.

Even just opening a portal from a specified point to another specified point used to be completely beyond him and he was stuck with opening portals in the near vicinity of the spell form itself. That resulted in a complicated set of actions-that in hindsight Felix was surprised ever actually worked-for destroying The Mind Devouring Crown. Oddly enough, what he was about to do was similar in a lot of ways and the coincidence was not lost on him.

Pumping the last bit of mana into the mold in his hands Felix instantly cast a Force Wall in front of him to push back the air itself.

The portal that appeared in the center of the crater was massive. It was still smaller than the portals on the portal spires in Telviras but it was by far the biggest Felix had ever cast and for a very good reason. As soon as it was open, the other side of the portal exploded through the opening.

Molten material super heated well beyond the surface of earth’s sun poured outwards in all states of matter. The absurd pressure at the center of the planet kept it mostly in a solid form but as soon as it passed through the portal, it vaporized into a gas. The pressure kept the flow spurting out like a cannon and the portal obliterated a massive chasm into the ground where the gas’ heat was enough to vaporize the ground.

Some of it cooled enough on contact to condense into a liquid which dripped down the sides of the newly opened chasm like beading sweat. It was hard to see much though as everything that poured out was bright white and blinding. Nova though, didn’t see with light unless she wanted to and so Felix had her send over everything that was happening from her perspective in real time.

Along with the experience of a vapor cannon melting a hole through a planet, Felix also got something a little more concerning, a burning desire to eat the planet’s core.

On the one hand, the planet’s core was so hot, the Force Shield was necessary lest they literally melt and even then, the radiant heat from the air around them was starting to lightly burn Felix. He was pretty sure it would melt Nova on the spot.

On the other hand, she was a Matter Sprite turned Matter Daemon and this was just matter so, Felix had no idea what would happen.

He tentatively gave her permission to slowly approach with caution and carefully paid attention to their connection with the remainder of his focus.

Nova, still acting like a child in many ways, exploded from a complete standstill and accelerated faster than even Felix could safely without destroying his body in some way. In a matter of moments she closed the distance and dove into the geyser spewing out of the planet’s core.

Though Felix couldn’t see her, he felt an immediate spike of pain then felt her location get thrown back from the force of the geyser. Felix felt his hormones and adrenaline spike as he feared the worst but, she wasn’t dead. A few moments later, he felt her location moving around and felt immense satisfaction from her as she devoured as much of the stream as she could.

Well, who needs caution when you can shape-shift into a metallic dragon I guess.

Shaking his head, Felix checked back in with the quest that had increased to 34 placed cores and clenched his jaw. Looking back out at the geyser, he thought about increasing the area of the portal but it was impossible. He was already drawing mana in from his environment and whatever batteries he had left as fast as he could and he was only barely keeping up with the maintenance cost of the portal.

Man the amount of mana that flows through Telviras to power those portals alone must be insane. I wonder if the mana distribution system designs are public record…

Half a minute passed of Nova happily swimming through heat that surpassed the surface temperature of some stars and Felix impatiently watching the quest screen tick upwards before a single quake shook the planet. It was like something massive had shifted and settled and Felix just hoped the planet didn’t fall apart too quickly.

He was confident it wouldn’t exist when he was done he was just hoping for a brief few minutes during the collapse where he could do what he had to then get out.

The quakes continued and only got worse over time but Nova was completely unbothered. The vapor from the planet’s core had settled and melted a multiple kilometer wide hole into the ground that was rapidly growing both down and outwards as the material pooled at the bottom. Small explosions, relative to the geyser, were constant as trapped gases and various other materials in the planet were released but Felix wasn’t worried.

Mark’s calculations put the depth of this hole once the core was empty at just over half of the planet’s radius, heavily dependent on the composition of the planet. They were also pretty sure the planet wouldn’t implode but rather gradually collapse inwards then likely slowly fall apart over time but, their confidence in that guess was lacking.

It was difficult to predict what would happen when they were no longer limited to a single periodic table. The elements Felix knew from earth all existed but that table alone now had at least three other dimensions. A two dimensional table didn’t even account for isotopes alone let alone how much mana was infused into the matter and in what states, densities, attunements and energy levels. Then there were entirely new elements that were impossible without the presence of mana and all of that was influenced by bound anima.

There were too many variables to account for unless Mark was the size of multiple suns and Felix had all the information in the universe. Neither of those were possible for now so, they approximated then tripled all their numbers to be safe.

The quakes continued but got worse as Felix looked around and saw the landscape shift downwards by large chunks at a time. Mountains suddenly fell and became valleys, chasms opened and closed creating new mountains and shooting material into the sky above.

Punctuating everything happening, a massive quake to Felix’s left shook the planet much harder than the participant’s skill had and as a result, Felix watched an entire mountain range not just sink, but vanish. Masked by a cloud of dust and sand, Felix was unable to watch but the result once it calmed was a slowly sloping and ever expanding crater with landslides pouring inwards from every side.

Mark, didn’t our calculations predict a slow collapse?

Adjusting for the reality of what has occurred along with data Grim collected from Nova about the composition of the planet’s core, the most recent simulation predicts complete collapse within minutes of the core being drained. The planet will most likely collapse then shatter and disperse.

What? How?

It seems as though the density of the planet’s core is much higher than we expected but the natural pressure much less. The planet itself seems to be filled mostly with pockets of gas making the planet as a whole, a small fraction of the weight we previously predicted. The gravity of the core along with System intervention is what held the planet together along with the strength of high grade material veins throughout the crust and mantle.

So without the core’s gravity, the rest of the planet isn’t heavy enough to hold itself together?

Correct.

Do we have enough time to drain it?

Not completely.

Unless… We accelerate things…

This idea has less than a 3% chance of not dramatically increasing the destruction.

Sure but, what are the odds I make it into the quest area fast enough?

86%

What about mana?

You will need to borrow from Nova.

Calling Nova over, Felix prepared the necessary spells and used a tiny portal to confirm the destination of the next portal he had to open. For whatever reason, the shrinking of the usable space in the event was limited and non spherical in weird ways. For example, Felix was able to open a portal into the void of space above without issue but a hundred kilometers to his left, that wasn’t allowed at all.

It was evidently designed just to accelerate the war and possibly leave the quest destination below them within the new barrier but still, a warped, not quite cone just felt weird to him.

Felix made sure Nova cooled herself off which, apparently, was trivial for a sprite that controlled matter, and had her revert to a kitten and supply him with mana. To be safe, Grim also emptied his battery into Felix’s Soul Space which he sucked up as quickly as possible.

Opening a new portal within the core of the planet, a calculated distance from the other portal, Felix began simultaneously draining the core into the void of space.

The pressure differential along with a second outlet and most importantly, the actual reduction of mass rather than redistribution, made things even weirder than before. A lurch in the planet indicated to Felix that things were working as the planet’s orbit was altered, the atmosphere was ripped apart and the planet’s collapse accelerated.

Looking around and watching things collapse rapidly followed by newly formed asteroids being jettisoned into space by the orbit change along with a massive explosion of subterranean gases made Felix feel slight regret.

Checking the quest screen and seeing the correctly placed cores jump from 34 to 92 washed all of that away though.

Felix’s spare focus jumped around checking everything as quickly as he could and he realized, pulling mana in from Nova, Grim, the environment and the remnants of his own core wasn’t enough. The drain was more than he could maintain and in just under a minute, he would have to lose a portal.

How much longer?

Just under 5 minutes to drain the core to a safe level.

Well shit. Definitely not going to last that long. Options?

Attempting to pass through the core prematurely has a near 0% chance of success.

I’ll take that as a no then. I still have my charm sitting around that I can pull from but that’s not nearly enough to make it 5 minutes.

It is not.

I don’t have the focus left to open more portals to accelerate my mana regeneration like I did before and none of you can open portals… without molds… except… Would that work?

It will buy you some time but will not get you to 5 minutes.

How close?

1.5 minutes short if everything is done optimally and the odds of losing each construct is about 70%.

Better than where we are now, let’s do it.

Pouring out of his Soul Space, Felix released 320 of the 357 remaining Seeing Eye constructs he had at his disposal, all of them instantly flying out in a different direction in three dimensions. Some of them flew straight up, others flew up then out, to avoid the planet destroying the constructs as it collapsed.

The initial burst of mana he had to provide to power all of them was more than he could handle himself so he redirected them all through to what remained in his charm. Even load balanced though, the mana flow rate was too high for his charm to handle but Mark had forewarned him of this. The odds of his charm surviving this were about 50% but he was fine with that. He was just using it as a load balanced battery anyways. It could always be replaced and with the knowledge he had now, likely improved.

As predicted, the charm strained itself and even with Felix desperately holding it together with every ounce of Matter Control he had, his Matter Control was weak and his focus spread too thin. The charm exploded starting with one battery and cascading outwards until all of them were gone.

The mana contained within them wasn’t lost though, not entirely. Keeping the charm in his Soul Space let Felix harness all of the mana and his Mana Control required much less focus for the same effect when compared to his Matter Control. He was just better with it.

Even still, he struggled mostly with using his focus to channel and direct the sudden explosion of mana everywhere it needed to go. As much as the burst of nearly 30 million mana was a blessing, it was also a painful endeavor trying to harness all of it.

Slowly, as the constructs grew far enough from him and each-other, Felix began shifting his focus on regeneration from his surroundings, to pulling through the space around Mark. With 320 portals all connected to the space, Felix was able to pull from everywhere in the event at once. In doing so, he had to effectively disable Mark for the time being though. There was just no way for Felix to effectively pull mana as aggressively as he needed to from a space where Mark-a fragile mana computer-existed, without destroying him. So, for the time being, Felix relocated Mark into his Soul Space which would hurt, separating the bond to his container, but was necessary.

He could fix Mark later, what he couldn’t put off was the draining of the Bastorus One planet.

Ever slowly, Felix’s mana buffer shrank slower and slower until finally it didn’t decrease at all. Then, it exploded outwards and the influx of mana he was getting felt ridiculous. He was powering two massive portals, 320 Seeing Eye Constructs and their portals along with an oversized Force Wall holding back the ridiculous heat before him and somehow, he was gaining mana, rapidly.

Felix’s initial elation confused him as to how this was only going to give him 2 minutes but he literally didn’t have any spare focus to ask the question or even have the thought loudly enough for someone in his mind to notice.

Two minutes passed and the influx of mana had barely slowed at all but, it fluctuated so much it was hard to draw any real conclusions. The quest screen had reached only 149 correctly placed cores which was lucky, because it had actually slowed.

That was where the luck ended though as Mark’s prediction proved correct. At first, just a single construct exploded as the planet’s surface crumpled all over and turned into a mess of vertical cliff faces separating the stone, sand and earth scattered everywhere. As it was a Seeing Eye Construct, they had all seen the pocket of gas below it open up and destroy the construct but there was nothing they could do, it simply wasn’t fast enough to move out of the way.

Judging from how long it had taken for one to explode, Felix assumed Mark was wrong but then, the destruction continued. The atmosphere had degraded along with the magnetic field around the planet to the point where cosmic radiation, charged particles from the stars and stellar winds became a real problem.

How is the planet degrading this quickly?

Mark already had the answer, having already accounted for it in his simulations, My calculations indicated that The System was holding the planet as it was and it has now released its hold.

Are you saying this planet isn’t stable on its own?

Yes. High grade materials along with the odd configuration of the mantle and the abnormal orbit of the planet around two stellar bodies all point to System intervention. The planet will likely either drift further into space or fall into one of the stellar bodies it previously pretended to orbit.

How long will that take?

23 days.

Oh, not too bad.

21 days.

Is your accuracy just increasing?

18 days.

Okay, now I’m worried. What is happening?

16 days. It appears The System, or some other factor, is redirecting the planet towards the stellar bodies.

Worst case, how long?

The worst case is obviously measured in nanoseconds. Assuming there is no additional acceleration from sources other than gravity and no teleportation of any kind, 9 hours, 41 minutes.

I’m going to lose all the constructs, aren’t I?

Yes. You have 20 seconds until they are all destroyed.

Gritting his teeth, Felix desperately pulled whatever he could from the portals as one after another, like dominoes, his constructs malfunctioned and his connections to them, lost.

Though he had managed to mostly refill his own mana pool along with Grim and Nova’s as a slight additional buffer, it still wasn’t nearly enough for him to finish draining the planet’s core. He tried switching his mental model around from a vortex to a void to a planet to a black hole to The Endless Hunger but no matter what he did, there just wasn’t enough mana in his vicinity.

Until, there was.

Suddenly mana appeared from absolutely nowhere. The Aether around him filled itself faster than Felix could pull it in and within 15 seconds, the Aether surrounding Felix was denser than he had ever felt before by multiple orders of magnitude.

With the new found mana at his disposal, Felix dropped his concentration on the Force Wall and let his body cook using the spare focus to manually alter one of the portal spell forms. With some careful modifications he slowly expanded the portal draining the core into the void of space until it consumed all the mana he could pull in then, he dropped his first portal.

He had been using a mold for that portal so he didn’t free up much focus but he did free up a significant chunk of mana flow rate and he redirected all of it to further expanding the other portal.

Quest: The Grand Design

…

Insert the cores into their respective receptacles. [187/256]

…

How much longer?

1 and a half minutes.

THAT’S TOO SLOW. WE WON’T MAKE IT.

50 seconds.

Wait, what? Is The System helping?

27 seconds. Possibly. The draining of the core is inexplicably accelerating.

Felix didn’t voice his thoughts lest he anger whatever was helping him and just watched as the correctly placed cores slowly grew while the core of the planet drained faster and faster with every passing second.

At 212 cores placed in their receptacles, Felix used the mold at his feet to open a portal back into the core and the entirety of the rest of his focus to push air turbulently through the core and out the other portal, into space.

It took him just 20 seconds to cool the area to a satisfying degree at which point he released the portal connecting the core to space, grabbed Nova and jumped into the hollow space that had once held the core of the planet. As soon as he arrived, Felix’s cells died faster than he could ever hope to repair. He was losing health by the millions every few milliseconds but he was expecting that.

He already had the next portal ready and all he had to do was finish pouring the last half of the required mana into it from the center of the planet. He couldn’t have done it on the surface otherwise the coordinates would have been redirected. It took an excruciatingly long time to fill the portal the rest of the way as Felix’s body was literally cooked and burned from the residual heat he didn’t have time to expel.

He wasn’t just standing in a massive hollow sphere either, the entire planet around him was collapsing and various chunks of stone and metal, all super-heated and some of it liquid, floated and bounced all around him. He couldn’t focus on that himself but luckily, Nova was happy to play hungry hippo and eat everything coming towards him.

A lot of it was far too big for her to eat but whenever she encountered those, Nova pushed them aside with all her might, proud she was able to protect Felix.

Watching his health plummet to 0, Felix only had a few moments left so he simply held on to the portal as best he could as he was forced back into his real body. The sudden transition of the layer around his soul vanishing and his body being removed from an extra-dimensional space then being rebound to his soul was so much worse this time.

Last time there was a moment of him losing access to the outside world entirely and that had let him live through the last of the Leviathan’s attack. Now, he forced himself to stay present and rode it out while holding the portal spell form with his focus and that resulted in him feeling everything. It was fast and clean and possibly the most awful thing Felix had ever felt as his soul was torn apart followed by his body followed by his soul being slapped back into his real body and all his senses being reattached. Jarring, painful and unsettling but the process was fast and clean nonetheless.

As soon as he was returned to his real body, Felix dove through the portal and used an instinct cast to move Nova through as quickly as possible. Closing the portal behind him, Felix couldn’t help but smile.

His health was down to just 40%, his skin was burned, his robes were in singed tatters and his mana was drained to nearly empty.

Looking around, feeling the Aether, the anima and matter around him, Felix immediately knew he was in the right place.

From what he could tell immediately, it seemed to be some kind of research facility. He had arrived at the exact location Melody had marked on his map but there was no one to either side of him. As Felix found himself standing in the middle of what appeared to be the main hall though, it was entirely likely Talrain had been there before.

Physically, the facility looked like a scientific lab with harsh lighting and cold colored materials all around. The Aether was denser by another order of magnitude compared to the surface where something had compressed the Aether around him. He thought that was ridiculously dense and it was impossible for him to draw in mana fast enough to empty it there but here, Felix could actually see the Aether.

Usually the effects of the Aether on his vision were mostly blocked out by his own brain as they were incredibly subtle. He could focus on them but he rarely did. Here, he didn’t have to focus on anything and it was like the area was filled with a thick fog that he could barely see through. He actually had to disable Reaper’s Sense’s passive almost immediately.

The ambient anima wasn’t dense, but it was active. Felix almost felt like there were thousands of ghosts or fairies flying around his head that he just couldn’t see, whispering various things into his ears. All of them were evidently curse based though as the whispers weren’t speech or anything intelligible but rather feelings, experiences, emotions and flashes of various senses. There were sights, sounds and smells that Felix’s mind-specifically Grim-told him weren’t real but that he felt nonetheless.

He was used to those, he knew of them and had dealt with them before. Now, with the new structured layer he had created, he was largely immune to the effects of the individual cores. Back when he was still finding them, he was dealing with one strong influence though, now it was like thousands of tiny little voices that were each much weaker individually, and easily ignored. All together though, they were something else entirely.

Felix was pretty sure he could handle it, very confident even. What he wasn’t sure though, was how the hell Talrain was putting up with it.

Looking from side to side, one end of the hall was a door and the other was a fork but, choosing between them was easy because the anima centralized around the door was significantly stronger than the fork. Running up to it, Felix didn’t even bother with the door itself and simply cast a portal right through it.

Felix made sure Nova was ready just in case but it wasn’t necessary at all.

The room was a massive spherical chamber with a bridge from the door to the near center of the chamber, a few meters away from a large floating orb. On the bridge just inside the room was an unconscious thief he recognized with a tentacled beard and a big burly body. He could tell physically the thief was alive and breathing though, not easily as he heaved and his chest squeezed his lungs.

[C - Divine] Ruzon: Right Hand of the Rightful Heir to the Galactic Sea (Lvl 1326)

He would probably live but, Felix was pretty sure he didn’t really want to at the moment. His entire being was being slowly whittled and suppressed by the overbearing curses all around them. If Talrain dragged Ruzon’s body out within the next hour, he would live but there was nothing he could do for himself as he was completely unable to react. He didn’t even notice Felix step into the room.

Walking past him without really paying much mind, Felix flicked his wrist and severed the tentacled head with a bit more mana than was necessary but here, it didn’t matter. There was mana to spare.

His rings cleaned up the mess and Felix continued right up to the orb which he identified.

[C - Incomplete] Imitation System Nucleus

The central computer of the Imitation System. The pinnacle of the taboo research and engineering that went into this creation is housed within the orb.

With such an interesting description, Felix was almost distracted by the identification. His goal in walking to the end of the bridge had nothing to do with the orb at all though and as his eyes closed, he listened.

All of the collective influence in the room pouring into Felix’s soul was rebuffed before getting through anymore than the cursory outer layer that made up his completely untrained and, so far, useless aura. Felix paid attention to every whisper on the ambient anima and within just a few seconds, much longer in his Soul Garden, Felix had a general map of his surroundings.

The room itself was a massive sphere with the Nucleus hovering in the middle and a bridge leading from the entrance towards the center. The outer sphere though, that made up the room, was really a complicated three dimensional structured lattice that Felix recognized from one of the entries in his Soul Compendium.

It was designed to maintain its structure and simultaneously facilitate connections through it. It structured and load balanced the connections, limited them where necessary but offered little in the way of security. This one in particular seemed to be configured for many connections, at least thousands, possibly a few orders of magnitude more.

All of that was easy because Felix had seen it before, he just recognized it had been modified. Actually tracing the connections though, was what took time and effort.

Quest: The Grand Design

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Insert the cores into their respective receptacles. [231/256]

…

The connections, Felix assumed, were to Imitation System Cores and everything he felt standing near the center of the room backed that up. The sphere of influence, the cacophony that was the ambient anima was recognizable and with every passing second, less obviously incomplete.

All Felix wanted to do though was to roughly map the inconsistencies and therefore, the incompleteness so he could get ahead of Talrain.

Instead of navigating the entire facility, Felix just opened a portal and pushed it towards the nearest inconsistency but, it simply wouldn’t pass through the sphere no matter how hard he pushed.

Sighing, he flew back over the bridge and moved his portal down the hall behind him. The door seemed to be the only hole in the portal barrier or whatever was blocking him and once he was outside of it, he pushed the portal towards the nearest inconsistency.

He had to fly back a bit to avoid the curvature of the sphere but once he did, he stepped through and stood in a small cylindrical room with a pillar in the middle. Looking up and down, he couldn’t actually see the top or bottom of the room but he knew he was in the right place because there was a gap in the center pillar.

The gap wasn’t very big but it was perfectly sized to hold a Core and so, Felix located the door and flew out of it. He made sure it was the only point of egress then flew down the hall. He thought about hiding in the room but he already knew Talrain was somewhat trained with souls and Felix was awful with stealth, especially with respect to his soul.

There was just no point and, Felix didn’t really want to.

Flying down the hall, Felix stopped at the nearest fork to make sure there was no way for Talrain to path around him and had Nova sit inside the pillar just in case.

Quest: The Grand Design

…

Insert the cores into their respective receptacles. [248/256]

…

Watching the correctly placed cores slowly climb upwards, Felix reassured himself multiple times that he hadn’t sensed more empty slots than there were remaining cores and just waited. He made sure his mana pool was full then began producing consumable batteries as fast as he could. Whether or not he needed them, and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t, it was something to do other than just sitting around. Even doing that though, he had enough focus to spare to manually heal his body nearly to full.

He didn’t dare move into his Soul Garden or Mind City to be absolutely certain he didn’t dull his senses but he did have Grim and as many residents as there were available pay attention to his senses. They essentially verified everything he saw, heard and felt from all of his senses and made sure he didn’t miss anything, in nearly 1,000 times slow motion.

The correctly placed core count climbed just once more before Felix felt Talrain approaching.

It wasn’t mana or a sound or anything Felix could control but rather a massive wake of whispers that had latched on to Talrain. Even from multiple kilometers away, once Felix noticed and realized what it was, he could track Talrain’s rough position.

As he approached, Felix’s approximation became clearer until he was able to exactly pinpoint him but Felix didn’t move. His emotions pushed him to race forwards but he easily pushed those aside. There was always a way for Talrain to teleport around Felix if he moved. Felix had already calculated where he was standing, he had Nova waiting and Talrain had to go through him.

If 8 hours were to pass, Felix would be forced to hunt him down before the remains of the planet were disintegrated in one of the twin stars it used to orbit but, it didn’t seem like that would be an issue.

From when he first sensed Talrain’s wake to the moment when Felix knew he was right around the corner, a half hour had passed. Felix had grown annoyed it was taking so long and he had no idea why until Talrain stepped around the corner and Felix barely recognized him.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The once elegant garb was gone, leaving him nearly naked save for some scraps and tatters that were still stuck to his body. His clean and symmetrical horns that reminded Felix of a ram’s were chipped, scarred, dirty and cracked, one of them missing the tip. His clean, light purple skin was covered in wounds, many of which still bled, some of which were dried into a crusty smear.

Oddest of all though, were the unnatural changes. His body was evidently bigger, his nails longer like he hadn’t cut them in years and his hair was unruly. He looked almost part beast which definitely fit with the aura he was giving off.

The source of the wake Felix had felt was obvious the moment he saw him. Talrain had those whispers and fairies Felix had ignored attached to him like leeches. They consumed and altered his soul and, given enough time, Felix was certain would have destroyed him. As of now though, it felt like he was multiple grades above Felix with a aura that stretched hundreds of meters outwards and made him seem like a god.

With a tone dripping in contempt, Talrain stepped forwards slowly, like he was savoring the moment, “Ah ha ha… It’s my sister’s little fuck toy.”

Felix didn’t even bother answering, unsure how sane and present Talrain actually was.

Talrain took another step, his body loose and swaying back and forth like he was a zombie, “I thought you surrendered to the brute?”

He waited a moment for a reply then smiled cruelly with his teeth and finally licked his lips, “Instead… you delivered yourself right to me… You know I wanted to kill you right?” Talrain spit on the ground next to him, the saliva whispering loudly into the anima as it struck the ground, “Melody probably told you, didn’t she.”

“Yes.”

“Ah, he speaks. Good… Why you anyways?”

Felix sighed as he realized Talrain had stopped moving, “Why me, what?”

“Why’d my sister pick you of all the trash in the school? You and the gun bitch.”

“I don’t know. Ask her.”

“ASK HER!”

The sudden yelling threw Felix off a little but not much as he was expecting some amount of insanity from someone literally having their soul eaten in real time.

Talrain bent backwards and laughed into the ceiling, “She lies… You can’t trust her. You can’t just ask her.”

Felix snorted, “Trust her more than I trust you.”

“Of course you do. Everyone seems to. Why though? Just because I get what I want? Because I change my personality to fit the situation? Because no one can tell what I’m thinking?”

The edge of Felix’s mouth twitched a little as he began putting things together, “Oh really? No one can tell what you’re thinking?”

Talrain sneered and Felix continued, “I’m sure your dad could tell.”

“Sometimes.”, The smirk on Talrain’s face made it all the more satisfying for Felix, he had successfully subverted his expectations and made him lower his guard so to speak. It made the next line all the more impactful.

“And obvious Melody always could.” He tried to speak with the most matter of fact, nonchalant tone he could muster and whether or not he did a good job, Talrain exploded.

Leaping towards Felix, Talrain looked like a werewolf as he led with his claws but Felix was completely ready for him. He was faster than Felix had expected but the spell was already ready.

Talrain’s body was blasted into the wall to their side hard enough that Felix was certain anyone else in their grade would have died to the nearly 20 million mana Force Push. The aura around Talrain weakened the spells though, like they were leeching off the mana and produced energy just as much as they were on Talrain’s soul. Even still, it should have hurt him but Talrain only looked like he was having even more fun.

The fact that his body had dented the wall worried Felix a little as to Talrain’s durability though.

In a flourish that was graceful and practiced, Talrain dove in with his claws towards the back of Felix’s ankles, his aura destroying the sustained Force Barrier Felix tried to maintain.

Using his Reaper’s Movement, Felix shifted and avoided having the muscles in his calves literally ripped out then swung his arm downwards releasing a Force Blade into Talrain’s body.

The blade produced a shallow cut but most of the effect was consumed by the cursed aura and the small cut he inflicted only added to the carving that was his body.

Rolling back to his feet and instantly kicking himself into another leap, Talrain aimed right next to Felix’s body so he pushed himself backwards with an instinct cast. Felix’s instinct cast was showing its limits though as it was based on an old and outdated spell form that wasn’t very powerful.

It would have been just enough if Talrain’s speed was constant but as much as his body, feet and movement were fast and practiced, his hands were too fast for Felix to see. With expert precision, Talrain cut a slit between two of Felix’s ribs and managed to nick an artery.

The bleeding was quickly stopped by Felix’s manual attention but the ridiculous precision had Felix a bit worried.

Before moving more than a meter through the air, Talrain had vanished. Felix swung his head towards the center of the cursed aura but he was somehow invisible.

Tracking his rough position, Felix forcefully filled his cloak’s enchantment despite the aura constantly eating at it and readied some spells.

Even knowing where he was coming from and pushing back against Talrain with a real Force spell, Felix was still cut. The wound wasn’t lethal this time though, just a series of gashes along the front of his thigh. Talrain had clearly been going for the inside of his thigh and Felix was just happy he had managed to avoid that. His cloak, as he had suspected, did nothing. Talrain’s curse coated finger nails tore through it like it was decorative tissue paper.

Sealing the wounds manually took up just a fraction of a second of a fraction of Felix’s attention and yet, he still missed it when Talrain vanished once again.

Darting around the room with his aura giving away his location, Felix released a burst of Flame that Talrain laughed through as he dove high and swiped at Felix’s neck.

The wound immediately started spurting blood outwards and Felix slapped the cut with his left hand to put pressure while his body manually sealed the wound and Talrain disappeared once again.

A few seconds of darting around the room and Talrain began to attack with what Felix could only describe as Curse Spears. Despite not being real, physical objects and despite Felix being unaffected by their whispers, the first spear ripped a hole right through his left bicep as he held his neck.

The rest of his body was severely lacking compared to the structure he had created around his core soul but the anima suffusing his body was still far denser than even other participant’s core souls. Cultivated curses though, were easily strong enough to overcome that and were more than his body alone could handle.

If he were faster, his soul tendrils could protect the area but he wasn’t and he didn’t have nearly enough to wrap himself up entirely.

With his bicep mostly severed, Felix’s hand and the pressure he was applying to his neck vanished allowing blood to spurt out of the wound once again.

Felix desperately dodged three other Soul Spears before having his right Achilles severed.

With his health down to just a quarter from nearly begin full seconds ago, Felix decided he desperately needed a breather and launched himself backwards towards the room with the pillar. He didn’t move more than a dozen meters but it was far enough that a massive black panther made of dark grey metal scales was able to leap over him and take over.

Talrain tried exactly once to get around Nova at which point she actually burned his foot with a column of dark red flame and violet lightning. His foot was still there and mostly functional as he landed on it shortly afterwards but it was at least visually damaged.

“You had to call in your pet. How cute.” Talrain laughed out into the room from the shadows and began showering Nova in Curse Spears.

She dodged a couple and got scraped by a couple, her Agility many times that of Felix’s but Talrain just chuckled when her saw her avoid most of the damage. Even though Nova was made of what Felix was pretty sure was Demitium, it wasn’t nearly enough for her to truly compete in this fight.

A break in the spears and a short moment of silence worried Felix right before a mass of phantom chains that reminded Felix of the specter army appeared. These were darker and much more significant than the skill Edras’ faction employed though as Felix could feel the curses that made them.

They twisted around Nova’s much stronger body but much weaker soul. It was strong enough, after Felix’s manual changes and her evolution, to keep her alive in this fight but it was nowhere near Felix’s. It wasn’t even close to enough for her to break the chains herself.

The next Curse Spear obliterated half of Nova’s leg without her being able to move at all.

Rushing back into the fight, Felix told Nova to revert to a kitten and run as he used his Soul Tendrils to snap the chains closest to him.

His wounds were only just sealed and he had only managed to push his health back to 40% or so but he didn’t have any other choice. He had purposefully told Nova to stay out of this fight for the exact reason that she wasn’t equipped to handle Talrain like this. Having his Persona available would have helped tremendously too but it was still recharging after stepping through the now emptied core of the planet.

He told Nova to sit back and regenerate if she could, not really trusting her to provide cover fire for him in this fight without hitting him as well.

Releasing the spell he had been flooding with mana into the general direction of Talrain’s aura, Felix blew nearly 40 million mana in an instant. The cone of sound knocked Talrain back but he quickly rolled to his feet and vanished back into the shadows.

How the fuck does an aura eat sound?

Instead of Curse Spears or leaping out himself, Talrain chuckled from his invisibility and Felix felt the whispers on the anima grow louder until they were literally screaming.

Beings that were like illusions made of curses suddenly appeared around Felix, jumping out of thin air and trying to latch onto him. Swatting them away with his Soul Tendrils, Felix was able to prevent them from ever really latching on and consistently draining his soul but, they still physically and spiritually hurt.

There were hundreds of these tiny little curse demons floating around, each one completely different in appearance, if they ever even became visible at all. His Soul Tendrils shooed and even destroyed them as fast as Felix could manipulate them but it wasn’t instant. They still clawed, bit and hit him, taking tiny chunks of his flesh and soul with each attack.

It took a lot of Felix’s focus to deal with the Curse Specters and all the rest of it was eaten up by just trying to avoid the few Curse Spears Talrain threw in from the shadows. The Curse Specters weren’t infinite though so as Felix destroyed them with his tendrils, the pressure he felt slowly lessened until was finally able to retaliate. Though his health had only dropped by 10% or so, the outer layers of his soul were ragged and beaten. It was functional but sore and even just moving was painful.

Felix attacked into the shadows aiming at the core of Talrain’s cursed aura with blades of Force and all though he couldn’t actually tell if he hit anything, by the fourth blade the specters suddenly backed off and stopped attacking.

Readying himself for an attack, Felix pestered and chased after the aura with Force Blades to try and slow down whatever Talrain was preparing but what hit him a moment later, he never would have expected.

The specters were back but they no longer attacked Felix and instead, they swarmed around him, never actually touching him, but slowing him down somehow. Suddenly it was like Felix’s every movement was dragged down but not like he was fighting through molasses but more like gravity had increased in every direction somehow. It was like the force he applied through his muscles was being drained which, fit with the specter’s whole theme of draining but Felix wasn’t even sure how that was possible.

Resisting Force by applying an opposing Force made sense. How the specters could ever target the Force being applied to an object directly was completely beyond him but it was the only reasonable explanation he had for what was happening.

That only lasted by itself for a few moments at which point the hallucinations started.

Felix had heard whispers, seen flashes, felt brushes, smelt, tasted and even sensed things with his mana senses but those were like echoes of a memory. They were weak, brief and easily ignored.

Talrain’s newest ability turned those into full hallucinations. The flashes became scenes and images around him, the sounds became thousands of voices and everything felt real. Immediately he was transported into another reality, a dark and barren hellscape with black ground, ashy clouds, dead flora and undead fauna.

A zombie that looked like a mangy dog jumped up and tried to bite at Felix’s face but he swatted it just before it reached him.

Felix spared half of his tendrils to fighting the illusory creatures, which he could feel were backed by real Curse Specters, and waited. So far, his spells have had little effect as everything he threw at Talrain was drained and dulled as it passed through the curse aura.

There was just no way for Felix to get through it with his spells so, he decided to take something out of Arthur’s playbook which, wasn’t very difficult considering they were one in the same. While his stats differed greatly, and it put Felix at significant risk, he didn’t really see any other option.

Ignoring the hallucinations was relatively easy as even though they appeared when his eyes were closed, he simply stopped processing anything visual with his mind. Focusing in on his soul alone, Felix blocked out every sense other than one, his Anima Senses.

Through them, he felt the Curse Specters jumping at him from every direction, he felt the Curse Spears before they reached him and he sensed Talrain’s position from his aura. Using his Soul Tendrils he minimized the damage from the first two while paying careful attention to the last one. He threw out the occasional Force Blade in Talrain’s direction but Felix wasn’t hoping for much.

He knew Talrain was suffering from all of the curses that had latched onto him and he knew Talrain was just savoring things. He could feel it, the shift in his aura and the echo of his satisfaction through it.

Letting his health drop by another 10%, Felix was worried he had made a terrible mistake but the growing anticipation and excitement he felt from Talrain told him otherwise.

Felix only had to wait a brief moment after that for Talrain to finally join the fight himself.

Where the Curse Spears were fast and obvious but relatively small projectiles in Felix’s senses, Talrain was effectively a massive cannonball and was impossible to miss as he raced up behind Felix.

As soon as he was in arm’s length of his target, Felix spun with a quick activation of Reaper’s Movement, Sense and Body all at once and grabbed and snapped both of Talrain’s wrists. Letting go of one, Felix pulled his arm back and Talrain instantly morphed into the shape of Melody. He opened his mouth to say something but Felix hadn’t stopped moving. He hadn’t hesitated or even flinched.

He stabbed his hand into Talrain’s stomach and reached out with his Soul Tendrils to manually shred the chunks of Curse Anima that had latched onto his soul. Each and every parasite he removed, he dragged into his Soul Space to be promptly obliterated.

Talrain fought back, wriggling and fighting to free himself, smashing his forehead into Felix’s nose, scratching, clawing and kicking everything he could reach but his attacks were only worrisome for a few moments. After that, Talrain was weakened and it seemed almost like he fell apart. Instead of pride and blood lust focusing his eyes into a razor sharp glare, his gaze was soft and glazed over like he was drunk.

His kicking and fighting weakened in a matter of moments followed shortly afterwards by Talrain passing out.

Let’s add new robes to the shopping list and a new enchantment and external soul defensive layer to the todo list. Something with a lattice.

Felix was genuinely surprised Talrain had lasted so long with his soul being sucked dry but he assumed the curse parasites had let him live right up until they were threatened. Then, they sucked as much as they could as quickly as possible to strengthen themselves in the hopes they could survive. Although, Felix wasn’t convinced they were smart or complex enough for all that, it was just the behavior that made the most sense from what he had observed.

As soon as Talrain was on the ground, Felix didn’t even bother finishing the job and simply used Eretheas to remove his head then harvested his body and soul. He tried to save as much as he could to sift through Talrain’s experiences but there just wasn’t much left to save. The scraps Felix found left behind were both useless and tainted by the curses, offering nothing of value.

A voice Felix had never heard before in his life suddenly spoke into his mind, Well done…

Thoughtlessly, Grim confirmed he had no idea who was talking to him and that it wasn’t anyone in his Mind City.

Focusing in on every sense he had, Felix desperately searched in every direction as far as he could to make sure nothing else was coming for him. He really needed to recuperate. The Blood Devouring Ring had only regenerated 5% of his health from Talrain’s body. It used to be higher but now that he had evolved his cells had become even more specialized and there was simply less overlap with other bodies. That resulted in there being less material for the ring to repair his body.

Please, allow me.

Felix had already been manually repairing his body as fast as he could but suddenly, it was like he had taken a potion as all of his cells were energized and sped up. They replicated and regenerated faster than he could manually direct them causing his total estimated time to fully regenerate his health to go from a few hours to a few minutes.

There weren’t any other side effects as far as Felix could tell but there was also no way Felix could see to reject the help if he wanted to. He was undecided as he didn’t trust the voice but at the same time, it seemed to be helping.

Once his health was full as well as his mana, solely from the density of the Aether around him, Felix stood and finally responded, speaking out loud because he wasn’t sure, “I take it you’re the Imitation System?”

That I am.

Can we speak like this?

Felix waited for a few moments in silence before they spoke again, Hello? You don’t seem to be asleep.

“Just checking something.”

You mind putting the rest of the cores in their slots for me?

“Why? What happens if I do?”

I get a helluva lot stronger.

“That I assumed but I’m not sure yet that I want that to happen.”

What? Why not?

“You are literally made from curses. You saw what just handling the cores did to Talrain, why would I agree to do this?”

Don’t act stupid. You and I both know there’s a chasm between me and Talrain. We are completely different and, he wasn’t just handling them. That idiot tried to fuse one into his body and literally opened his soul up to do it.

“Why would he just do that? He didn’t even know what they are.”

I may have told him they were some of the densest mana computers in existence and that I could be his own personal little System.

“You told him to fuse a core into his body?”

What? No, of course not. The idiot was convinced he needed to bind his soul to mine through the cores and that that was a good idea somehow. Don’t ask me how he managed to live as long as he did.

“What will you do once I reassemble you?”

Uh… Well…

Felix just sighed.

Look… I want to be whole and more powerful and all that… I mean, I’m already pretty great but… that’s not all I need from you.

“Hurry up. We don’t exactly have a lot of time.”

Yeah yeah, we’ll fall into a star. You’ll fly or portal out of here way before that happens though, I’m just hoping you could… take me with you.

“So you aren’t tied to this building?”

No this building is just to finish the whole thing. Connect me up to all my cores.

“Can’t you just leave yourself? I’m assuming it was you who messed with the quests and the rules and gave me a bunch of mana and so on?”

Well yeah, duh. Who else would it be? I could move myself but I can’t… survive on my own.

“I’m not binding you to my soul.” Probably.

Really? I definitely thought you would do that, insist o- but that isn’t what I need anyways. I need you to smuggle me out, hide me in your Soul Space.

Felix nodded as he started to catch on, “That’s why you helped me so many times randomly throughout the event. I’m the only one with a Soul Space. Why do you need a Soul Space in particular though? I’m sure there are others who could move you, put you in spatial storages or otherwise get you out of the event?”

You’re a smart guy, you tell me.

“You want to hide from The System, why?”

Let’s just say I would definitely be instantly killed if I went out there all by my lonesome.

“Okay so, The System doesn’t like you, wants to kill you. Why hasn’t it done so already?”

Well, it can’t. Not right now. If you aren’t going to reassemble me right now, can you at least come here so I can show you things?

Felix nodded then walked over to the pillar and reached out with the correct core, fully intending on placing it just so he didn’t have to backtrack but hesitated at the last second and stowed the core. Instead he grabbed Nova and opened a portal as close as he could to the main chamber.

Walking towards it, the door opened for him instead of him having to portal through it this time, and he walked down the bridge towards the core that was now visibly awake. Before, the orb had been translucent but with no other side, like the center of the glass orb was infinitely far away.

Now, it was more like his Pocket Marble. There was a fog or cloud swirling within, this one a kaleidoscope of colors that brightened and flashed and moved like a living thing.

Hello, nice to talk to you face to face. Aren’t I pretty? As the Imitation System Nucleus spoke, the fog swirled around and moved rapidly while tiny arcs of multicolored electricity tickled the outside of the orb.

“Uh…”

Am I not pretty? I honestly don’t understand you sentient creatures that well but I was pretty sure colors and lights made things pretty. Am I wrong on that?

“Yes.”

Oh… well maybe you can teach me.

“Why hasn’t The System killed you already?”

Right so, you get the basics of how I function, I’m the Nucleus and there are a bunch of cores. What is your understanding of how it’s all going to work?

“I’m not giving you grounds to build a believable lie. Just tell me and hurry up, I got shit I want to do.”

Ugh fine, I wasn’t going to lie I just- It would be easie- Seeing Felix’s unimpressed glare, the Nucleus cut itself off, Okay, whatever. I connect myself to the cores then, when I need to think about something really hard, pay attention to something, do something with my awesome power, I employ as many cores as I deem necessary. They’re like… pseudo-sentient creatures or mini systems themselves that just can’t think or do or be… They just don’t have a consciousness and need to be directed, does that make sense?

“But you can employ one to say… monitor a person or an area. You can use multiple to manipulate large areas, mana, anima and so on. Is that how The System works?”

Yes, exactly. Yes, this is how The System works but it’s… a lot more complicated than I am and much bigger. It uses multiple Nuclei working together to form a council that make decisions along with sectors and structured hierarchies of cores and subsystems that have their own councils and all that works together to… all of it.

As the Nucleus spoke into Felix’s mind, a projected representation of what it was saying appeared on top of the orb, all somewhat cartoon like. There was a council of little orbs that spoke to each-other all sitting atop thrones on a cloud. The scene zoomed out to show a massive branching network of orbs working together, growing progressively smaller as they got further from the central cloud.

“How do you know all this? Or how did the people who built you know how to make you? I assume you got this knowledge from them?”

Nah, it’s aaalll me. They didn’t find an instruction manual to The System or anything like that. This is Chicken and the Egg the answer is I came first… sort of. The Chicken and The Egg are one in the same and were born simultaneously… The answer is The Egg and The Chicken exist in a quantum state.

Felix half groaned and half sighed having to deal with the Nucleus, “You’re trying to say you were created from the thing that had the knowledge to build you?”

Yes, actually. I didn’t expect you to get that one. Bear with me- How do you think The System maintains control across the multiverse and specifically, in separated spaces like this?

“Well now I assume it dedicates a subsystem of some calculated size or set of cores to control and purview a section.”

Yes exactly. In truly separated spaces like this though, it doesn’t maintain a connection to the subsystem at all times.

“Because it can’t?”

Yeah, sort of. It could but maintaining a meaningful, lasting connection between the two creates a lot of problems the biggest of which is deterioration of space, both on this side and the other side. It can’t open the connection more than every once in a while or so to sync up because The System and the way it communicates is… heavy, so to speak.

“Got it so, it avoids accidentally destroying the multiverse. If this space is truly separated then it must split off a part of itself and embed it temporarily in here. You were born from one of those split off pieces then. How did-” Felix waved his hands to the building around them, “-these people get their hands on you at all and without being killed for trying?”

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. The piece that was used to make me was corrupted by a curse and was forced to excise the bad to save the good and keep itself from being consumed. In doing so, it was weakened which normally The System accounts for but this time, these people found an unstable Exotic weapon that should never have existed in this universe, something The System couldn’t predict. They didn’t even use it purposefully, it was just a lucky series of events.

“Exotic?”

It’s just a thing from another universe. Sometimes Ancient is used but only for things that predate The System, Exotic were made after but made there way in here anyways. Exotic might be the rarest rarity because items from other universes are already rare and there has been much less time since The System than before it.

“Got it. Why not self destruct at that point?”

Good question. It should have. I assume it was damaged in just the right way to not be able to.

“So it can’t kill you here because the piece in this event isn’t strong enough by itself?”

Yes. It knows about me though and definitely reported back.

“Right, so if I smuggle you out in my Soul Space, The System kills me?”

No. Probably not… It’s a little complicated but kind of like convictions… You know what those are, right?

“Yes.”

Right, not exactly the same but The System has rules and laws it must abide by. They’ve loosened overtime but one of the most stringent is to not directly attack, hurt or target any specific creature.

“It can still make my life a huge pain in the ass.”

Yes, but that’s the limit of what it can do. It cannot do anything that it even remotely thinks will lead to more than a 0.5% chance that you will die or be directly harmed. It also cannot affect you in any way that will directly lead to an overall divergence of outcomes greater than 1.5%.

“I see. So its hands are mostly tied.”

Not to mention it seems to like you for some reason anyways.

“Can it hear us right now?”

Nope.

“Are you sure?”

No, I’m awesome, but also yeah, I’m certain. Try opening your status screen.

Felix confirmed it wouldn’t open then tested a few skills and tried opening and using his inventory.

This building shields a lot of it then I’ve blocked out the rest of it around us right here. Can’t stretch that very far though, even if this is a small subset of The System.

“Shouldn’t my cores stop spinning? Did you pick that up from The System?”

Nope. No idea what you’re talking about but from context, I can’t affect as many things as directly, not right now and probably not ever. As for passive skills, you’ve probably just built up enough of a habit that it doesn’t need to do much anymore.

“What do I get if I smuggle you out and what exactly do you need me to do?”

Well for starters, I’d like to be finished. I need you to put me in your Soul Space and never take me out and… we need to hunt down The System subsystem still in the event.

“Say what now?”

Oh come on, aren’t you dying to try?

“I mean… I’m curious but I also don’t want to die.”

You’ll be fine, probably. Plus, think about it this way, you can feed it to me and I can become even more awesome. Didn’t think that was possible, did you?

Felix blocked out all external responses and thought directly to Grim, Or I could consume it myself.

“Alright so I smuggle you out, what then? You exist in my Soul Space and do what exactly?”

Uh… cool… things… You know, I don’t really know. Haven’t gotten that far and don’t know much about the outside really.

“Wait, have you never been outside a subspace before?”

Nope. Found me in an event and was moved to another subspace shortly afterwards. That subspace held this planet and the only way for The System to follow its rules and still kill me, was for one of you to expose me.

“Right so, what can you do from my Soul Space which you are planning on living in indefinitely?”

Oh, all kinds of things.

“Can you increase my stats? Give me skills? Upgrade my skills? Teach me things?”

No no no no no. I can’t affect you or anything external at all really. That’s one of the only exceptions to the no-touchy-people rule. If someone finds a way to game The System or alter it directly.

“You did that though. With the quests and my identify skill.”

No, sort of. My changing the quests is more like I know a back door so I changed some things around, it isn’t gaming The System for anyone directly. Changing stats is a BIG no no. Even if I altered your body or something, because I was made from a piece of The System, it could reasonably justify just killing you to prevent it from happening in the future. The skill thing I just used a back door and temporarily tuned the cooldown on proving proficiency. Lots of people benefited-or could have-so, no favoritism.

“Alright, here’s what I’m thinking. It is way safer for me if I just consume you and use the mana computers and anima myself.”

You don’t want to do that, just thi- Wait hold on… What did you just say? What do you mean?

“Why would I ever risk The System’s ire by saving you?”

I know things? About The System and… stuff?

“Look, wild guess but you know nothing truly significant or important just from an information-handling standpoint. The System definitely doesn’t store unnecessary and dangerous information in weaker, split off, subsystems.”

Well no, not really.

“Right so, anything else you can offer or… I am kind of on a stellar deadline.”

Why not just smuggle me out then decide later? You can also harvest me then…

“Sure but, System ire.”

Yeah but also, I can help you find the subsystem in this event.

“Which also puts a System sized target on my back. Why would I want to do that?”

Alright look. I am a unique and complicated arrangement of mana and anima that exists in exactly one other place-which is also technically everywhere as a place but not the point. If you can harvest me and recreate that, you’d be a System engineer and you already would have done it.

“You’re right. I was just curious if you had anything else to offer. You cool if I get rid of all these curses?”

Wait… what? Hold on, you just… No? They make me… me. I’m awesome and also only really work because of them.

“You’re bound to them because of mana stability, yes I know. I don’t need curses to do that.”

Uh… Ignoring the ridiculousness of that-and a lot of other-statements you’ve made, please don’t?

“They’re a risk.”

They also give me personality.

“You have enough of that as is.”

No but also, having the curses as part of the cores give them more purpose. The System is pretty general purpose but different subsystems will use different convictions to be better at certain tasks.

“You aren’t even planning on doing anything but sit around and live inside my soul. What the hell tasks do you need specialized subsystems to perform?”

Okay, you know what? You’re smart enough to know that if they might help me be better they should stay. We will eventually find something for me to do.

Felix sighed and dropped the act, “I’m trying to gauge how much of the curses to keep.”

Oh… I mean I’m confident I won’t be corrupted so… all of it! Maybe even turn them up a little.

Shaking his head, Felix reassembled, reattached and repaired Mark within his Soul Space then gave him a few minutes to sync and read through his recent memories.

Mark, calculations on how much curse to keep in the cores?

It took Mark a few seconds to respond, Optimally, all curse strengths are normalized to be equal to the core 20% from the weakest curse you sensed within this arrangement.

Felix’s brow furrowed, How precise do I need to be with finding and matching the 20% core?

Using the core 10% from the weakest will result in noticeably degraded performance but using the core 30% from the weakest as a baseline is only 1.4% more dangerous.

Okay, so lean higher. How closely do they have to match?

Within 1% to account for our standard safety margin.

That’s… doable. Thanks.

Turning his attention back to the Nucleus, Felix gestured to the cores lying beyond the room they were in, “This configuration of cores, is it calculated and carefully mapped out?”

Happy to be addressed again, the Nucleus spoke up, Sort of. This is the most balanced arrangement that they could find without access to a supercomputer. I’m a brain, not a super computer. If I was connected to the cores I could figure it out but not right now, as I am.

“So it doesn’t matter where the cores are? I can rearrange them as I like?”

Yeah, I guess. Just you know, try not to make it too hard on me.

Felix ignored the Nucleus and had Mark, along with a good chunk of his own brain, work together to find a better arrangement. As they worked on that, he raced out of the room and opened a portal to the first core in the arrangement.

Originally, knowing there were 256 cores, Felix had thought that number was significant and the fact that it was a power of 2 mattered. In reality, someone picked that number as a batch size and the cores they had collected were the final batch of cores that had been created then stashed away. In terms of the configuration of the Imitation System, the number was meaningless. In fact, there were thousands of cores, probably tens of thousands but not likely hundreds of thousands.

Felix didn’t have even close to enough time to even touch all of the cores, let alone adjust and normalize the curse strengths within them. Luckily, he didn’t have to. For the most part they were close to where they needed to be and the rest of the balancing work could be done with some simple reconfiguration. There were however some cores that stood out as particularly egregious in terms of curse strength and so, Felix headed to those to deal with them manually.

The current configuration, the one the original creators had come up with, dealt with these anomalous cores by pitting them against each-other to try and create a balance. While functional, Felix wasn’t a huge fan of just leaving potential problems he could fix in the design, especially one as complicated as this. If they caused a problem, it could propagate, cascade and multiply until it was impossible to deal with.

Reaching the first core, Felix carefully but also as quickly as possible, reached his Soul Tendrils into the core and severed the curse. He left some of it there then replaced the removed anima with new, blank anima, that his soul had cleaned.

None of these curses were strong curses, like The Endless Hunger, or even higher tier curses, like The Endless Hunger, they were derivatives. Easier to handle and weaker overall but still effective and, as Talrain had learned the hard way, still dangerous. They just weren’t quite the same and so, as he flew, Felix began poking the bear a bit.

He couldn’t help himself after dealing with so many curses, he had to remind himself of the difference and also see how much stronger he was against The Endless Hunger he still stored in his soul. Testing it with a tendril, Felix smiled as he was able to brush up against it briefly without literally dedicating all of his focus and willpower. It was an improvement, even if it didn’t mean much in terms of functional abilities as he didn’t really fight high level, cultivated and old curses very often, or at least didn’t plan to.

After the initial poke, Felix didn’t poke the orb of infinite blackness any more and focused himself entirely on getting from core to core as fast as possible. He was able to detect which ones stood out amongst the others relatively easily so the biggest limit on his speed was how fast he could open portals from one to the next. By the thousandth core, his portal cast time was noticeably lower from about 5 seconds to about 4 and three quarter seconds.

Not a huge difference by any stretch of the imagination but by the thousandth core, he was finding whatever he could to occupy his mind. The computer part of his brain was occupied so he couldn’t really work on spell forms, research or simulations. Left with just his own biological brain, he was forced to find anything he could to work on, improve on or even just distract himself with.

Eventually he decided to tune back into the one sided conversation the Nucleus was having in his head without any response but ignored whatever it was babbling about.

So then all I had to do was move a few drops of rain and suddenly the rabbi-

“Nucleus, you need me because I have a Soul Space. Why did you let Talrain get so far and almost kill me? Why didn’t you step in?”

I’m not limited by The Systems rules if that’s what you’re trying to probe out of me. I just… well, the same way you’re putting on an act and probing me…

“You were testing me. Trying to see more of my abilities, got it. Can you give me more specifics on how this contraption works? What will it actually do when the configuration is complete and activated?”

Think about The System. If all of it were just hanging out, it would take up many galaxies worth of space… maybe more, don’t have the specifics on that.

Felix’s brow furrowed, “It doesn’t create a subspace, then you wouldn’t need me.”

No no, a true subspace is both easier and harder and at that point, it would use an actual separate dimension. Both of those methods require more power than this and would make communication, observation and everything The System does way more complicated and dangerous. This method doesn’t have those issues but it is way more complicated. You know how there are a whole bunch of spatial dimensions but most of them are kind of weird?

“No. I use 4, arguably 5.”

Okay well, there are a bunch of them. What do you know about quantum mechanics?

“Some, likely not much relative to the totality of the topic.”

Right so, if I said this facility was designed to overlay the space of the cores with my own and place us in a quantum entangled state where we coexist within a single point in space and yet are simultaneously occupying the same space at the same time and also always and also never and we’re also smeared across a whole bunch of dimensions, all at once… does that make sense?

“Yes.”

Oh, cool. Well yeah, that’s the explain like you’re an idiot version. It’s a little more complicated than that… a lot more and honestly, I don’t fully get it all I mean… I know the theory but I don’t really understand it so, don’t ask me for more.

“Can I use this or a similar contraption to quantum entangle and overlay space of other objects?”

You… could? Obviously the objects would have to be specifically configured to work together, communicate, connect and share state. I’m designed so I can have thousands of states that I share and use to interact with the cores… I have no idea how to make it a distributed system if that’s what you were hoping for but you could probably do the same thing with another centralized system. Not sure what else you would want to put in me but… I’m open to the possibility.

“Was that the lust curse or do you have no sense of humor whatsoever?”

Yeah… the curse. That was it for sure.

“I guess you’ll meet them at some point but I have a mana-supercomputer in my Soul Space right now. I call him Mark.”

Really? Can I meet him? Also, don’t you think it’s a little morbid to just kill him off by integrated him into me?

“Not right now. He’s working on calculating the most balanced configuration of cores to make you whole. I’m not killing him. I was thinking of putting him in your place.”

Woah woah woah. Hold on, I don’t think you co-

“Not now. In the future with different cores.”

Oooohhh… I see. Well, he might never be what I could b-

“Yeah, he’ll be way smarter. He’s already a computer then if I just attach similar computers with no ability to operate independently, he can simply offload work to them.”

Right so a whole lot of computers working together to make… a big old computer. That’s not nearly as cool as I am. I’m not sure you fully get that I am a piece of The System.

“Well, made from a heavily damaged piece of The System but… Cool. So what?”

So what? The System is above the Gods. It literally controls the universe.

“This one.”

I mean… yeah?

“You just begged me to save you despite offering nothing in return. You can’t do anything on your own and neither of us can think of any use for you. I don’t care if you’re a machine that was literally crafted from multiple universes all working together and compressed down inside a Primordial being’s arse. You don’t do anything.”

Okay. That was mean.

“Be useful and I’ll think about trying to be nicer.”

You kind of suck… you know that?

“Oh really? I have 2841 more cores to normalize. The only reason any of this may be possible is because I am regenerating enough mana each second to open a portal every 5 seconds, half of my mind is dedicated just to opening the next one while the other half performs soul surgery on a computer. All of this while the computer integrated into my skull is working together with the supercomputer I built to calculate the ideal configuration to fix you, a piece of arguably the most complicated thing in our universe, despite you being admittedly, useless.”

Alright well, you kno- Wait, 2841 with 5 seconds between… I’m not like… a computer or anything but… that’s cutting it really close, isn’t it?

“Yes. Luckily, we have just over 4 hours left and the time it takes me to cast each portal is slowly decreasing so, my brain is part computer and… we should make it… barely. How long does it take for this thing to run?”

Instant thankfully. It’s just press the button, wait a few seconds for it to spin up and all that then it just happens.

“Good.”

You know… The only reason what you’re doing is possible, is because I’m supplying the mana, right?

Felix sighed, “Yes.”

SOOOO, All that awesome stuff you’re doing, I’m a part of it. I’m doing it too, if you think about it.

With an incredibly annoyed expression on his face, Felix communicated directly to Grim in his mind, The Nucleus seems stable even when I insult and challenge its power.

Grim nodded, It seems capable of handling Pride without growing unstable despite being a little unbalanced towards that curse specifically. Wrath is clearly not an issue either. ‘I’m not a computer but’ it seems safe enough to me.

Felix groaned mentally, Ha ha. Stupid jokes aside, I agree. It’s unfortunate, I was kind of hoping to harvest it.

Grim chuckled, You know as well as I do you’ll get more out of dissecting it later when you know more than you will destroying it now. Plus, seeing how this machine works.

Normalizing all of the cores took longer than Felix had hoped as his portal cast time remained largely the same after reaching just over 4 and a half seconds. He was able to lower that under 4 seconds in this specific situation because he was using the same spell over and over again, nearly non stop. If he distracted himself though and wiped his mind clean, then re-visualized and cast from scratch, it still took him just over 4.5 seconds so he wasn’t actually improving any more.

Luckily, Mark and his brain had finished calculating a few hours ago and so Felix was able to simultaneously start rearranging the cores while he continued surgically fixing them at the same time. Grim also memorized the new configuration and directed Nova on which ones to switch so she helped as well. In the end, he spent another hour after the surgery just rearranging cores until he was finally done and, very satisfied with the result.

The configuration was way more balanced than before, now offering an equal taste of each curse from all directions, balanced against each-other nearly perfectly.

The inside of the facility had risen by about 10 degrees but after all of the evolutions and modifications Felix had gone through, it didn’t change anything for him. It was however, indicative of how much time they had left which wasn’t a lot. They had no good way to see what was happening outside but Felix kind of assumed they were a large stone chunk of the planet barreling towards the twin stars and now, pretty damn close to them.

With no windows and the guarantee that opening a portal to check would fry him, they relied on Mark’s previous calculations because none of them trusted the Nucleus’ math, even the Nucleus.

“So what now? Configuration is complete and I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible.”

Now all you have to do is feed me your soul.

“Ha ha.”

You’re no fun. Real glad I’m going to be stuck inside you for the rest of my existence. Just step outside and watch.

Felix flew back out of the sphere shaped room and stood just outside the door next to Nova who was busy trying to eat more of the walls. She had managed a few bites but nothing more in the time they had been there.

The bridge stretching out towards the middle of the room retracted towards the door and vanished into the wall then, the Nucleus began to brighten. The fog within thickened and expanded until it no longer looked like a fog at all as it pressed right up against the outside of the orb. Were it not for the flashing lights within the orb and having seen it before, Felix would have assumed it was made from fusing various crystals together.

The entire spherical room as a whole brightened as seemingly random lights all over began appearing. Felix could feel them through his soul and mana senses and knew they were the cores all connecting and synchronizing.

The flashes both in the orb and around the room accelerated exponentially until the orb was simply a bright ball of light then, with one final blinding flash, the entire process was complete. The orb in the middle of the room was notably smaller at only about a meter in diameter but otherwise, looked identical.

UNLIMITED POWAH!

“Uh huh. So what can you do now?”

Oh, all kinds of things. Way too many to list them out.

“Uh huh. Well, can I move you now or what? It’s already a few hundred degrees in here and I don’t want to waste more time than necessary.”

Yeah yeah, let’s go.

Flying into the room, Felix slapped the Nucleus and pulled it into his Soul Space. It was harder than he had anticipated as the Nucleus was actually huge, both in dimensions he could and couldn’t measure. Afterwards, he felt like he had stretched his soul out and it ached a little from the strain but it was manageable. As soon as the Nucleus was safe, he opened the portal spell he had already prepared and filled with mana then flew through, with Nova on his shoulder.

Positioning where the portal should end up was trivial as the gravity of the twin stars made their location obvious so, he pointed it away from them. They were strong enough to feel now but not strong enough to pull his portal off course, thankfully. Then, all he had to do was push it really far. Originally he planned on opening the portal to any of the coordinates he had previously measured that would still be valid, just without ground beneath them. Unfortunately, him, Mark and Grim were all a little worried about the state of the planet and the possibility of opening a portal into a rock only to be jettisoned into magma or something.

The void of space was much safer and easier to plan against with a simple modification to the bubble he had used to survive the gas in the quest where he had fought the Leviathan and won the hat. Now, it surrounded his entire body instead of just his head and had enough Force to contain the pressure against the void of space. There was also now a small heating component to try and keep himself from freezing.