Ensuring Grim was free in his mind, Felix mentally prodded to get his attention, Is hitting C grade actually worth spending time on? I’m not evolving my race so I won’t get a burst of stats from that. My class probably won’t change either. Actrually, I’m not even sure my class and its skills are doing anything for me though, I haven’t noticed them, so maybe I do change it. Anyways, odds are my profession is the only thing I upgrade but I don’t think I want to do that just yet. I want to get more experience with constructs so I get a chance at Soulbinder for my profession.
Grim chimed in just as a sounding board, Sounds like no then.
Felix nodded, I agree. I think I want to fix this brain thing first. I want to experiment with the dueling spells after that. Getting that instinct cast Force Burst to be consistent would also be huge but may be too time consuming to matter, I’ll save that for last. I’ll also work on total focus, cast speed and cast range but for the same reason, last.
Grim communicated his agreement wordlessly, You should also see if you can push your mana pool a little further especially if you practice against that thing in your other Soul Space.
Right, I can do that right before the duel itself and it’s just free mana, no reason not to. All that leaves is increasing my stats as much as I can. Guess it’s time I finally go corpse shopping.
Mana Channels or traditional?
Ideally Mana Channels. I just don’t feel like massive hulking muscles suit me as much. They seem to guzzle way too much energy inefficiently, from what we’ve seen so far. Anything I can get to use mana instead is just more elegant. Brain first though.
For the rest of the day, Felix grew the Mana Computer he had been working on until it was the size of a marble then carefully constructed a filter for it around a soul seed. For this personality, he damped emotion as much as he could and had it really hone in on his own desire to control things. He also made a few other modifications to fit the personality he envisioned then very carefully, slipped the mana computer marble into his soul.
He bound the computer to the soul seed and filter he had just created and ended up with what looked like a marble with an aura, a comet, that flew through its respective layer in his soul.
Popping into his mind city, Felix was immediately appalled. While it had looked odd before with so much perfectly flat, empty land, now it looked like an abstract painting of a city. All of the empty space within a few kilometers in every direction had been filled with impossible structures that legitimately looked like renditions of crayon drawings from toddlers.
He was comforted by the thought of how easy it would be to reset everything then walked over to an empty space far away from the mess that was his mind city at the moment. He spent a few minutes thinking through what house best suited someone with the personality he had tried to create and once he was happy with it, actualized his vision.
Walking out of the large concrete block of a building was an older looking male elf that was completely bald with a set of round glasses a top their nose.
They walked right up to Felix and bowed, “Felix. I am Othorion, though it will be easier to refer to me as Orion.”
Felix nodded and smiled, “Well, you are definitely more intelligent than the rest of them. Grim!”
Grim appeared next to Felix a moment later, “Hello Orion.”
“Master Grim.” Orion bowed his head.
Felix turned to Grim, “How many do we need to manage everything right now?”
Grim winced, “More than just Orion and I unfortunately, maybe another three and we could pull it off?”
“Alright. I’ll target 10 then before I get rid of the rest of them. In the meantime, could you two try and keep things organized for now? I do realize this is essentially a daycare and I am sorry about that.”
Grim nodded, “Yeah, should be fine.”
Orion bowed, “Of course.”
Did I accidentally imbue servitude into their filter because unconsciously I wanted a butler? Or, is it just that I am quite literally god to this thing? Oh well, it’s definitely not unwelcome.
Rather pleased with how Orion had turned out, even from just their brief conversation, Felix got to work on more constructs in his mind with actual brains. The biggest bottleneck for him was the computers so he started by trying to figure out a way to grow them faster.
After fiddling with different ideas for a few hours, he ended up with something he was rather pleased with. Considering he couldn’t grow the computer himself because that would literally take days, he settled on creating a greenhouse of sorts. He spent his time replicating the same anima that had grown the computer before and spreading it out into cells.
He now had a three dimensional grid of cells and as long as those cells were supplied with mana each would grow a computer over time. It was somewhere between a factory and a greenhouse and ideally, it would create computers at least a hundred times faster than he was managing to pull off manually.
He would still need to verify and check the computers but he was hoping he could assign that task to one of the mental projections he was creating. Then it would be truly automated and he could start working on his actual plan for how to speed everything up.
At first he watched the cells growing and ended up scrapping everything and starting over, this time with a tiny portion of a computer he manually grew in each cell, a seed. At that point they grew properly and actually produced something usable so he watched and corrected mistakes as they happened.
Once they were big enough, he harvested 90% of the contents of 10 cells, combined it all together, manually smoothed the edges, corrected the flaws and verified everything. Repeating this process, he ended up with 10 computers that were similar to Orion’s then he formed creations around them with soul seeds and filters and returned to his Mind City.
Appearing in the core of the city, Felix reached out with the back of his consciousness and wiped out all of the flawed creations he had made in his soul. He moved the actual anima into his soul space where he could recycle it but as soon as he moved them, the flawed creatures vanished right before his eyes.
Looking around, he wiped out all of their creations then set up a building, reminiscent of the registration building in Telviras and opened the door. He didn’t want to create houses for everything so his alternative was to have an immigration center of sorts and let the creations create houses for themselves.
They were mostly humans, elves and halflings because they were the most adjacent to what Felix still considered himself, human, in his mind.
Felix summoned Grim again, “We should have more than we need for now but pay attention and see if there are any major flaws with these. While you watch these projections, I’m going to start on the other type of projection that will fill out most of the city. Hopefully we get some kind of self replication and automation going because there is no way I can keep creating these manually.”
Grim nodded, “Sounds good. I’ll see what we can come up with for automation.”
“Actually…” Felix furrowed his brows as he thought through the options. Ultimately, he decided to fence in an empty chunk of land, separated from the city. Within that fence, he created a building that looked like a factory from the outside but a greenhouse from the inside.
There were rows and rows of shelves that each contained a cell within them. A representation of the computer farm he had just created in his main Soul Space.
He briefly considered creating a new Soul Space he could give the city access to but decided he would do that later when security was more of a concern. For now, all of these constructs were literally warped projections of his own soul that lived inside his head. He had full control of them and could easily restrict them to not touching the rest of the Soul Space just by willing it.
In the future it might be a problem but he would reorganize things at that point before it became a concern.
Felix turned to Grim, who he could sense right behind him, “Alright now we can automate the growth of the computers. Probably just need one person to correct any flaws that appear.”
Grim nodded, “I’ll see if anyone is inclined to this kind of work.”
“Alright. Good luck.” Felix nodded then vanished, returning to his own body and checking the time.
He still had a couple hours until his Spell Formation class so he started working on a new computer growth farm. This one was based on a brand new design he had been thinking about and so it was going to take some time to figure out. Most of the time he spent working on tiny prototypes so he could test the idea.
Felix ended up working on it with a portion of his focus for the entirety of Spell Formation class. The class was largely the basics and though Felix learned some new patterns, channels and considerations, the majority of it was review. Adaline was also in the class which confused him because he had figured she was some kind of gun slinger but he figured it may have to do with her profession.
Solo Combat the next day was far more interesting. Walking into the class and through the portal to the very same arena they had used for Group Combat, Felix was immediately placed into a tournament bracket, based on registration order. This class had less than half the students registered when compared to Group Combat but they were being split into classes of about 20, meaning there would only be 6 classes.
Sorted by registration time, Felix was the last to register and right before him was Adaline, who had gotten in through winning the tournament. His first match was against her.
The first 20 students to register were split up into 10 isolated sections of an arena right away, as there were a lot of matches to get through. Each section was overseen by a single Adept to ensure everything went smoothly. Felix managed to overhear the rules, not that they were trying to keep them hidden.
The same gear restrictions as in Group Combat applied so Felix stowed his charm even as he sat in the stands and watched everyone situate and prepare themselves. Felix’s first match would be in the 6th round of matches so he had some time to wait.
It didn’t appear as though Melody was in this class so he, thankfully, sat alone off in the stands.
A minute passed as the first round of combatants prepared themselves before the matches began.
Immediately, it felt to Felix like the whole arena exploded. Even more so than the Group Combat fights had been, these fights were flashy. Whether or not it was because they didn’t have to worry about their own teammates or because of selection bias, these fights were dangerous.
Felix noticed the same Lightning-javelin-fighter and massive-great-sword-fire-engulfed students from the Group Combat arena along with a number of other dangerous looking people. There were some more traditional looking fighters who were just extremely fast and skilled. There were also complete oddities such as a martial artist who seemed to be refusing to fight their opponent at all. They either avoided or knocked aside every strike but never struck back, even when it was abundantly clear they could have.
It took a few minutes for the fights to conclude, the Lightning-javelin and flame-great-sword wielders winning their matches. The martial artist’s fight was actually the last to finish when they, in an astonishing turn of events, surrendered as soon as all of the other fights were finished.
The next set of students filed into the arena and were quickly sorted into their respective fights. The barriers separating them were raised and the second set of matches began.
There were a few more flashy students, some of which embarrassingly lost but otherwise the matches were generally more mundane with no surrendering monks in sight.
Felix watched the matches mostly to get a sense of the other students in the class as he rapidly alternated through creating his best attack and defense spell forms against his opponent.
Considering the pair of revolvers on her hips accompanied by her mostly leather armor, Felix was running under the assumption that she was mobile and long ranged. Long ranged was great for him with his defense and attack options but mobility was annoying. His best spells at the moment were still Fire based because he hadn’t found better nodes, even searching the library. Fire wasn’t very fast though and every Fire spell he could come up with was relatively easy to dodge.
That meant he could either attempt to slow them down with a Slow Field spell that he could create relatively easily or stick with Lightning at over 2.5 million mana per spell. Realistically that left him with 30 casts if he didn’t use his mana for anything else at all. Ideally it would be enough but he didn’t doubt she had defensive options at her disposal.
She was after all, currently considered the best combatant in the cycle.
He decided he would start with Fire, since it was relatively cheap at just half a million mana for a 10 times overpowered Fire Ball then switch to Lightning if he needed it.
“… Adaline, Felix!”
Hearing his name called, Felix hopped into the air and glided down into the arena amongst the rest of the students.
“Adaline, Felix you two are in arena 10. No equipment more than one grade above yours. If you didn’t enchant it by yourself, then it has to be your grade. No batteries, no spatial storage unless it’s integrated into your weapon or armor. Any questions?”
They both shook their heads then headed over to their subsection of the arena. Felix flew over to the far side as Adaline took the closest.
“You have 1 minute to prepare yourselves before the matches begin.”
Neither Felix nor Adaline seemed to have anything to prepare. Felix filled his cloak with mana, which actually garnered a slight reaction from her but otherwise, they stood still and looked at each-other. At least, Felix studied Adaline.
Adaline, during the preparation minute before the match spent the time actually enchanting something in her palm, something smaller than Felix could see. She stowed it right before the match began so whatever it was, had nothing to do with the upcoming fight.
“Begin!”
Felix immediately erected a tight Force Shield around himself, hoping to slow and potentially even stop any bullets fired at him before they ever reached his cloak. Adaline on the other hand immediately sprang forwards, far faster than Felix’s body would have ever allowed him to move.
He was not however, limited by his own body’s limited speed and he rocketed himself up and to the side with a Force Spell allowing him to match her obviously much higher Agility. As he flew away, he dropped a Fire Ball right where she was about to land.
Pulling out one of her revolvers, she took aim and fired three shots in Felix’s direction and one at the bead of fire racing towards her right before she landed. She then kicked off the ground and into the air, firing two more shots below her which actually seemed to propel her into the air giving her a facsimile of flight.
Felix was ready to let his Force Shield and cloak enchantment handle the bullets racing towards him so he largely ignored them until he realized, he had made a huge mistake. He had assumed she was a gunslinger, someone who used revolvers to fire bullets. He very quickly realized though, she was much closer to a caster.
The three bullets racing towards Felix were not simple bullets. The first vanished in mid air as a piercing beam of Force shattered Felix’s Force Shield and his cloak enchantment, boring a bullet sized, perfectly circular hole, right through his shoulder. The second flew right up to within a dozen meters of him before releasing an inferno right into his face.
The last he didn’t actually see because of the flames surrounding him but he did feel it. The bullet had either created or split itself into a thousand shards that all smacked themselves against his cloak enchantment, ripping a few million mana free from his pool.
As Felix fell through the fire, his concentration on his flight spells broken, he caught a glimpse of Adaline in the air off to the side with a look of pure disgust on her face. Looking at the ground and her body, he didn’t see any sign that his Fire Ball had done anything, meaning, the bullet she had fired at it must have somehow neutralized it.
Felix caught himself just before landing but was immediately slammed back down to the ground from another bullet that vanished into a spell form right above him. As his back smacked the ground causing his body to bounce slightly, Adaline landed right next to him and looked down.
With his health at a measly 5% Felix logically didn’t think there was anything he could do, it was however, his nature to fight. He started to assemble the spell form for a Burst of Fire around his body to gain space but never got the chance to finish it.
Adaline looked down at him with a mixed expression of disappointment and disgust right before she pulled the trigger and ended the fight.
Felix reappeared in the rest and recovery room below the stands of the arena and quickly hopped off the bed, this death being much less traumatic than the last.
Well that did not… go well.
Grim chuckled, I am literally in your mind and soul. I know how much you enjoyed that.
Well… Dying isn’t fun and the fight itself… wasn’t even close.
But…
She won the tournament to get in. She is amongst the best combatants in my cycle. I… The fight wasn’t even close… and she isn’t even that much higher in level than I am…
Oh. It’s the challenge that excites you.
Oh yeah. Maybe that’s why I agreed to the duel which… I realistically shouldn’t have taken without at least getting more information.
Well you are kind of at a low point right now in progression.
Right and even if I get everything on my todo list done, she should still beat my ass.
Which means there’s more to fight for, further to go.
I’m pretty sure I can win the duel. This though, means there is more I can do and learn. More challenges to face and more to overcome beyond that. It also means I won’t be easily surpassing the others here, like I did in the tutorial and integration. At least not any time soon.
I mean, there are always people outside this cycle. Gods, Demigods and so on.
Yeah but it feels… boring I guess, the idea of being the best in the cycle. Even if there are stronger people all the way up to godhood.
Grim chuckled, Well, I’m happy for you I guess.
Felix shrugged as he merrily flew up into the stands, waiting for his next matches.
Losing the first match just meant he was placed into a different bracket amongst the rest of the losers while Adaline went onto a winners bracket. She was obviously the favorite to win at odds of nearly 10 to 1 as Felix found out when a student approached him offering a to take bets.
Felix didn’t bother taking the bet but he was pretty sure Adaline would win. She had already fought all of the strongest people in her bracket and won during the entry tournament. Though the result of the matches were predictable, Felix was excited to see how she won.
Now that he knew she was more of a mage than a gunslinger, now that he had seen her enchanting something, he was far more interested. Luckily for him, the upper bracket matches were all scheduled before the lower bracket matches so he was able to sit back and watch.
The Lightning javelin wielder, Zeraxes, had been the favorite to win the entry tournament and from all appearances, the final match would be a rematch between him and Adaline. Adaline was completely obliterating everyone in her way as the matches became progressively less embarrassing for her opponents.
Felix was expecting her to be derisive in expression because that was how she had treated him and that was how he had judged her personality but instead, she seemed almost apathetic. It seemed her disappointment and even more so disgust were reserved specifically for him, for whatever reason.
Zeraxes was far more flamboyant and often stood proud and smiling with every opponent he beat. He was completely cordial though, offering them the opportunity to stand and surrender if they didn’t want to actually experience death. He was always happy and proud, his eyes filled with joy and pride with every opponent he faced.
In almost every way, he seemed like either a father, a hero or more likely both. Adaline on the other hand was like a tyrant, dominating everyone in her path with no mercy or remorse on offer.
While Felix respected Zeraxes’ approach, he couldn’t help but find Adaline’s matches far more enjoyable to watch. The rest of the student crowd watching didn’t seem to agree with him though as their expressions took on a sour undertone whenever Adaline won her match far before the others finished.
As the rounds passed, Adaline receiving a bye in the third round to even the numbers, the expected result came to fruition, Adaline against Zeraxes.
The student taking bets came around again and Felix almost placed a bet on Adaline winning when he saw the odds had reached just 3 to 1 in her favor but decided against it. It seemed the rest of the crowd were inclined to bet against her out of spite, even if she was more likely to win.
Now that there was just a single match taking place, they were optionally given access to the entire arena, which both of them agreed to, followed by the customary minute of preparation.
Zeraxes stared Adaline down, twirling his Javelin and stretching his body, a show that seemed intended to rile up the crowd more than anything else. Adaline on the other hand, was back to enchanting something in her palm. She had completely dismissed her opponent and her quill simply flicked back and forth as she continued working on whatever it was she was working on.
As the minute came to a close, she stowed the item and quill then looked up, her expression completely blank and actually drew both revolvers this time. It was the first time she had done so in the matches Felix had been watching so he was rather excited to see what would happen.
Now that he saw both revolvers, he noticed that they were both similar in size and shape, they both had long barrels and a simple cylinder. They were rather large in design but mostly because of the raw mass of material in them that seemed entirely functional rather than ornamental. They both however, despite their mass, seemed to fit in her hands perfectly, like they were made for her.
The biggest difference between the two, as far as Felix could tell at the moment, was that one was almost entirely black and the other white. He suspected there were other functional differences but he hadn’t actually seen her use the white one yet.
“Begin!”
Zeraxes expression immediately grew serious as he leapt forward and towards Adaline, aiming to reduce her range advantage. Adaline was expecting this and fired the white revolver at the ground beneath her feet, launching herself into the air and backwards.
Twisting himself in the air, Zeraxes spun all the way around and launched his javelin almost like it was a cannon in her direction. It shattered the sound barrier immediately and trailed Lightning between it and his hand.
Felix’s eyes weren’t fast enough to follow its entire flight but he caught glimpses of its location as it approached Adaline then was deflected off to the side by an angled barrier. It didn’t travel more than a few meters behind her though before it vanished and reappeared in Zeraxes hand.
Adaline used her white revolver to launch herself to the side as she raised the black one and fired off a pair of shots in Zeraxes direction.
Ironically, bullets were unassuming and relatively non threatening to their bodies at this point, these bullets though, Felix and apparently Zeraxes, had no idea what they would do.
He had fought her before so Zeraxes knew to get out of the way but against these bullets, that apparently wasn’t enough. The first exploded into a burst of Force that knocked him off course but the second actually redirected itself in his direction.
Zeraxes tossed his javelin to the side almost as an afterthought right as the bullet turned into a solid column of bright light.
As his eyes readjusted, Felix caught sight of Zeraxes suddenly running across the ground around where his javelin had been.
He used the increased leverage of having solid footing to throw his javelin at her again but this time, she didn’t dodge it. Instead, she fired off a shot from the white revolver towards the javelin, sending herself flying in the opposite direction.
An arc of Lightning connected Zeraxes previous position with the javelin as he vanished, reappearing next to it. Both he and Felix though, immediately noticed something was wrong.
Zeraxes was stuck and couldn’t move, frozen in the air as Adaline fired off a series of bullets from her black revolver towards him.
Even from all the way in the stands, Felix could see Zeraxes struggling against whatever it was that held him, seemingly unable to doing anything. Lighting arced across his entire body, originating from the javelin in his hand as his body was pierced, much like Felix’s had been, by multiple beams of Force.
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He still struggled, despite being riddled with dozens of holes all across his body but it had become clear he didn’t have a way out of the trap that held him. Adaline took careful aim with her black revolver as she floated over him, evidently having some other way to fly other than just using her revolvers.
With a single beam of Force through the head, Zeraxes was finished and the fight was over.
The crowd of students watching from the stands murmured as Adaline simply walked away, her face completely blank once again.
The rest of the fights were much less interesting. The lower bracket seemed to largely consist of fighters who took the class to learn rather than flex and improve their already impressive abilities. The vast majority of them evidently didn’t focus on fighting.
A number of the losers from the upper bracket were added to the lower bracket at various stages just to even out the numbers and Felix’s matches were completely boring.
The first was against a sword fighter who didn’t actually have any ranged options whatsoever making the fight trivial as Felix simply lazily floated through the air. He marveled the entire time that this individual had made it to the level they had without having any ranged options but dismissed the thought after finishing them, deciding it wasn’t worth thinking about.
His next fight was more interesting as he fought an archer but his cloak entirely negated their arrows. They tried a few more powerful shots, powered by a combination of skills and mana but Felix was easily able to differentiate those and deflect them as they left the bow. The archer on the other hand was not used to combat in the air and took a beating trying to stay airborne.
Felix also fought one of the students from the upper bracket, just to fill the bracket, in the quarter-final round of the lower bracket. The fight was rather disappointing as well though as student leapt around with a massive maul. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have a ton of control over their flight. They were powerful but with some careful timing, Felix struck them with a Lightning Bolt to disrupt their jump, slowing them and caught them mid air with an overpowered Force Shield.
At that point they were completely stuck and they sighed right before surrendering and disappearing.
The semi-finals were even more mundane against another melee fighter that actually did have ranged options, just not very strong ones.
While Felix was logically happy to have made it to the finals match of the lower bracket, he was rather disappointed in the quality of the fights. It seemed almost unfair to him that he was up against so many people with no real options to fight him and the fights hadn’t been remotely challenging.
He began to realize that it seemed as though only about half of the class had real quality combat experience, the other half just wanting to learn. That meant that in total, there was probably only about 20% of his cycle that focused on combat, the rest having gotten in through their profession or other means.
Felix would probably have put himself then in the top 20% of the cycle in terms of combat ability but knew how misleading that was. In terms of the people that focused on combat, he was at or near the bottom. The gap between him and Adaline too was massive and if he didn’t catch up soon, would only grow.
That thought, thrilled him.
The last fight, though he wasn’t necessarily excited about it, he was curious.
His opponent was the martial artist who had surrendered their first match. From the glimpses he had seen of their other fights, Peace hadn’t actually hit anybody. They also were never hit themselves which led to a lot of questions.
He had noticed Peace discussing with their opponents before every match and so was fully expecting them to approach him but as they walked into their section of the arena, they didn’t. Both of them walked over to one side of the arena, both having-surprisingly considering Peace was a melee fighter-agreed to use the entire area instead of the more constricted subsection.
During the preparation minute, Felix studied Peace.
[C] Peace (Lvl 1473)
He was the highest level he had seen from any student. He had lightly tanned skin with black hair that was cut very short and wore entirely black. His robes and pants, the wraps around his ankles and wrists along with the shirt underneath it were all entirely, inky black. Overall though, he looked completely average.
The customary minute for preparation passed and Peace immediately surrendered.
Uh… That was… disappointing.
Peace hopped out of the arena in a series of incredibly impressive jumps as the first Solo Combat class was over.
Felix continued to work on the new computer he had been working on for the rest of the night, actually rather surprised that Melody hadn’t randomly popped up over the past few days. Nova had also been missing but brushing over his soul bond, she seemed to be incredibly happy wherever she was so he didn’t bother looking for her.
“Welcome to Animancy. The class that really shouldn’t be offered in his cycle because realistically, you are all much too young to be capable of anything in the field. Here we are anyways though, so lets get to it.”
[?] Salkisara: Professor of Animancy (Lvl ?)
“Animancy is simple. It is the art of constructing, manipulating, repairing and otherwise dealing with souls other than your own. As many of you know, manipulation is covered by the sister class Soul Manipulation so we will not be covering that here. This course can be thought of as largely theoretical whereas that course will be more practical.”
“Here we will discuss what is possible with souls, why we would want to do them and the best ways of doing so. This is especially helpful for things like creating constructs from scratch although you will be largely working with soul gems during your time here.”
“When you eventually strengthen and practice with souls enough to actually be capable of doing anything, you will find what you have learned in this course to be invaluable.”
The rest of the lecture was similarly dismissive of the students capabilities while being incredibly informative at the same time. They mostly discussed the process of binding a soul to a construct or otherwise prepared body, even touching briefly on necromancy and why it is so much easier.
“I will continue to lecture you on imposed convictions next dekad.”
The students of the class rose to leave, Felix much faster than most but not quite fast enough.
“Oh and would Felix Kade please wait a moment.”
Uh… Shit..
The rest of the class filed out of the room, a number of them glancing over at him, especially Adaline who was unapologetic in her glaring.
Is she in every single one of my classes?
She wasn’t in Constructs and Elementals.
Okay so 6 out of 7 so far?
She just picked a similar schedule, she’s a mage and possibly an enchanter. Wouldn’t be surprised if she was in your next class too.
Yeah, Mana Control does kind of naturally fit with everything else…
Once everyone had left the room, Felix approached the front stage and walked right up to Professor Salkisara.
She looked up at him with an incredulous expression then sighed, “Ked mentioned your conversation about binding souls to constructs in your mind.”
Felix shrugged, “They don’t actually have bodies so… not sure they count as constructs.”
“The projection within your mind is the body.” She shook her head and sighed, “The fact that you apparently did what you did without even knowing what you are doing is… absurd.”
Feeling a little more uncomfortable than he had before, Felix took a deep breath, “Was that all?”
“Follow me.” The Animancy Professor sounded almost reluctant before she led him through the door she had entered from and down a series of hallways into an incredibly generic office.
She closed the door behind him then walked over to the desk and pulled out a glowing gem along with a construct body that resembled a suit of armor fit for a fairy.
Felix followed her gesture and stood next to the desk where she handed him the gem and the body, “Bind the soul in the gem to the construct body.”
“I… don’t know how? In Ked’s class we just… waited.”
She sighed again, “Remove the soul from the gem then orient it within the construct body. Push a portion of the soul through the bindings, making sure they follow the channels all the way through. Repeat for all the bindings.”
Felix looked down at the construct body in his hands then sighed and took a seat. Reaching into the soul gem, he grabbed hold of the soul and pulled on it, the gem immediately shattering in his hands. He was surprised but not enough to let go of the soul so he, as instructed, pulled it over to the body and placed it inside.
Once there, he sought out the bindings and much to his surprise, found them almost instantly. He had expected he would have to search for them but they were so obvious, they immediately became apparent.
The bindings almost reminded him of nodes as he mapped them out to the best of his ability while tracing a portion of the soul through the bindings. Once he had traced all 7 of them, he placed the construct body onto the desk and looked up at the Professor who was staring intently at the construct with an unreadable expression.
After just a few minutes, far less than he had had to wait for the constructs in Ked’s class to awaken, the construct pushed itself to its feet.
Professor Salkisara sighed deeply as she dropped into the chair on the opposite side of the desk from Felix and began writing something on invisible parchment with an invisible quill.
“You’re the integrated kid, right?”
Felix nodded.
“I’m kicking you from my class.”
“Wait, what?” Felix almost smacked the table in front of him as he stood before he caught himself.
“You already have 7 other courses and I’m not grading you on the purely theoretical aspects of this class, it would be a waste of time. Instead, you’re gonna help Ked and I with our research. I’ll grade you based on that work and change this class in your schedule to something else like Advanced Animancy or Adept Animancy or Animancy Research Assistant.”
Felix shook his head, “How is that going to work, you have to teach the class right? I don’t exactly have a ton of free time on my hands. Plus, I do want to hear the lectures, I took this class because I want to learn this stuff.”
She just waved him off, “Then watch the lectures back from memory crystals or pay another student to transcribe them for you. I usually have Adept’s give my lectures for me anyways and work during class time.”
Felix frowned and she stood, “It’s not as weird as it sounds. Lots of professors have higher tier classes for Adepts and will take days off to do research. Especially full lecture days. You’ll see it happen more as the classes continue.”
“Wait, how do I get memory crystals of my classes?”
“With permission from your professors, you can get memory crystals made from a student or auditing Adept for anything lecture heavy. Ked already agreed and I can get you permission for Mana Structures and Spell Formation too. Soul Manipulation is too practical and you’ll want to keep attending yourself and Mana Control is almost entirely practical. There will be some classes you need to attend but the professors will inform you when that happens.”
Felix nodded, “What is your research?”
She scoffed, “Constructs, what the hell do you think?”
“Is it… that weird to be able to… bind a soul to a construct at my level? Enough to help with your research?”
She crossed her arms, “Yes but that’s not why. Do you know how many soul gems I’ve shattered?”
“I don’t know, a few?”
“Thousands. Never just from removing the soul though.”
Felix’s brow furrowed, “How the hell was I supposed to do that then? Would this have all happened if I didn’t shatter it?”
“Yup. You also bound that soul faster than you had any right to and apparently, it didn’t strain you at all. Just head to Ked’s lab whenever you have time. There are always people there, day and night.”
“Do I get a say in this?”
She looked up from whatever she was writing, “Do you want to say no?”
Felix hesitated for a second, “No.”
“Good. Call me Professor Sal. Now, clean up that mess you made and get out of here, I have somewhere to be.”
Felix nodded and popped to this feet then quickly brushed his hand over the remains of the soul gem, using spells to collect them and stowing them in his Soul Space. Once done, he exited the room, Professor Sal closing the door behind him with a slight wave of her hand.
Felix headed back to his dorm.
Well… that was… sweet. That’s what, 4 days of classes I can now safely skip?
Yeah and considering you can fast forward the memory crystals it’ll take you minutes to get through them.
Whether or not this research is interesting, I definitely can’t complain about being given permission to skip a whole lot of classes. How are things going up there by the way?
Grim chuckled, Way better. You should check the original computer growth farm you had made. Not sure how the rest of self replication will work but at least the computer part seems handled.
Felix nodded, Sounds good. I should be done the initial prototype of my computer soon. I’ll probably finish it tomorrow then head to Telviras to go corpse shopping on my day off.
Popping into his dorm room, Felix sat down on the couches and looked down at the computer he had been experimenting with over the last few days.
Instead of limiting himself to the scale of transistors he had used for his own brain, Felix had gone all out with this one. After his time spent wrestling with the inky blackness that swallowed a sector in Telviras, he was dubbing the Hungering Hollow, his control was massively improved.
With this computer he was leveraging everything he could. He even pushed it to expand in all 4 spatial dimensions at once and using a new growth farm, once he had ironed out all the kinks, made it exponentially faster. Now, instead of growing it from the outside slowly, he could harvest chunks from the farm and fuse them onto the main mass.
He spent most of the night expanding his farm so he could continue to grow the computer and figured he would work on the soul he was going to bind to it after Mana Control class.
Walking into the classroom for Mana Control, Felix had expected another lecture hall but instead, it was different from the other classes he was taking. Instead of an auditorium style room with a stage at the front, this was more like a classroom. There were a enough chairs for the 20 or so people in the class to sit but they were all in the middle of the room.
All around the outside of the room, there were what appeared to be entirely black chalkboards on every wall.
[B] Dharel (Lvl ?)
Dharel walked over to the front of the class as everyone found a seat then nodded to the class with a smirk, “This is Mana Control and I… am not your professor. Professor Fin teaches the an Adept class during this very time slot so, for the rest of the epoch, I will be filling in. Fin will usually stop by every once in a while but having him here is just a waste of his time for the most part. I’m sure he’ll make time to meet you all soon though, he does love new students.”
Twirling around, Dharel walked over to one of the chalkboards, “Let me introduce you to your new best friend, the mana board.”
A small stickman in entirely blue appeared on the board and walked along it then turned towards the class and waved.
“This is Sticky. Everyone say hi to Sticky.”
Dharel waited but no one said anything or even waved. A few students looked at each-other but it seemed people were largely too thrown off to participate in the Adept’s games.
Shrugging, Dharel slapped the board, “This here is a wonderful invention by our very own Professor Fin who keeps the design completely secret. You may find similar objects elsewhere in the multiverse but these and their precision are, entirely unique.”
Dharel looked around clearly hoping to impress the students but once again, no one really reacted much.
“In essence, this board shows mana. That’s it. What it allows us to do though, is fight.”
Behind him, another stick man appeared and the two started to fight each-other in a very basic fighting style.
He turned to the class, hoping for more excited reactions, “Wooooooould anyone like to volunteer?”
When no one raised their hands or spoke up, Dharel pointed at someone at random. A student sitting in the front row, a blonde female halfling walked up to the other end of the board. Dharel pulled over a stool so she could stand right next to the board.
“Alright all you have to do is place your hand on the board and push a bit of mana into it. Don’t push too much, you only need a few points.”
The student placed their hand on the board and after a short moment, a slightly blue glow grew out of her hand across the board.
Dharel looked far more excited than the rest of the class, “Great stuff. Ok now just try and move it around.”
She tried and the blob did move around a little but with very little precision. At best she could move it around a few inches up and down the board.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I haven’t seen many in the last 20 cycles that have done any better than you on their first try.” Dharel gestured and the student sat back down, clearly feeling embarrassed despite what Dharel had said.
“Mana Control is often neglected because it is hard. There is no easy way to get better at it. You can’t just increase a stat to improve it. Intelligence is tied to quantity, your control is completely separate and has no relation. You simply need to work at it, practice and you will get better. This course is designed to motivate you to practice as well as give you techniques to make it easier and faster. Well, and more fun.” Dharel smiled as he looked around.
“Alright, I want you all to spend time on an exercise for me. Your mana is inside you and all of you should be able to push mana into objects. What I want you to do now is reach inside yourself and try to move it around a little. Think about the sensation of pushing mana into an object and replicate that internally. Once you feel like you can move any amount of mana from your feet, to your hands and to your head, all throughout your body, come find me and I can give you the next exercise. In the meantime I’ll walk around in case anyone has questions.”
With a nod, the majority of the class closed their eyes and began. Some immediately showed strain on their faces and others opened their eyes constantly, looking around to make sure no one was watching them.
Felix was one of those, he looked around and waited a few moments until everyone was mostly occupied then rose up into the air and floated over to Dharel.
Dharel nodded to Felix, “You have a question?”
Felix hesitated for a few seconds, unsure of how best to put it and how much to reveal then he sighed and touched the board to his right with a finger. Pushing just a point of mana into the board, Felix produced a stick man just as Dharel had and had it walk back and forth. He was very tempted to do anything more complex as the stickman was possibly the most trivial thing he had done with mana since learning to move it at all.
In the first puzzle dungeon, when he had learned to use mana, he had gone from moving it to shaping it into spells. This was somewhere between those.
Dharel’s eyes went wide as he nodded, “Not bad. How far have you gotten in Mana Control?”
Felix shrugged.
“I mean skill proficiency.”
Felix shook his head, “I don’t have a Mana Control skill in my class, race or profession.”
“Ok, that makes this a little more complicated. How about this, draw me the most complicated thing you can make on the board.”
Felix looked at him for almost a minute while he thought before responding, “No?”
Dharel took it rather well, his face unsure more than anything, “I’m sorry?”
Felix sighed, “What’s the most complicated thing you can draw on the board?”
Furrowing his brow a little, Dharel touched the board with his full hand and pushed mana into it. It took him a few minutes to write out some simple text that seemed to be a poem of some kind though the translation didn’t really do it any favors.
Felix perfectly copied Dharel’s poem right next to it in a fraction of a second.
Looking between the two poems, Dharel’s face was completely blank for almost a minute, “Huh.”
“Should… I just drop the class?”
Dharel looked at the poem once more then turned to Felix, “Not yet. Go to this room and tell him I exempted you.” Dharel wrote out a room number on the board for Felix.
Felix nodded and left.
The room Dharel had written for him on the board was another classroom in the adjacent building and it took Felix less than a minute to get there. Felix carefully opened the door in case there was an active class but no matter how careful he was, it was impossible not to be noticed.
[?] Fin: Professor of Mana Control (Lvl ?)
Professor Fin was the same bipedal cat race as Professor Fen but he was was a white cat with blue stripes. He didn’t wear glasses but sported similar silken robes to Fen.
He immediately noticed Felix, “I do not recognize you which means you either haven’t taken any of my prerequisites or you drastically changed your face during an evolution. Considering you’re only D grade, I’m gonna go ahead and guess that… you have the wrong class.”
Looking around, the classroom was more auditorium like but it was much smaller with just a few dozen seats. At the front of the room there was no stage but there was a massive blackboard, similar to the ones in the Mana Control classroom. This board though was much bigger, with a pure, reflective black surface rather than a matte and off black one.
The only other people in the room were 8 Adepts all seated randomly amongst the chairs. They all turned as soon as Fin addressed him.
Felix shrugged, “Dharel told me to come to this room and that I was exempted. Unless my map is lying to me… pretty sure this is the place?”
Fin nodded, “Take a seat, we’ll talk in a bit.”
Felix sat down in the closest seat then Fin dove back into his lecture.
The class was odd for a number of reasons. First, Felix was not expecting a lecture in what seemed to be a Mana Control class. The lecture itself touched on uses of Mana Control, mana theory and a number of other odd and obscure mana related topics.
Second, the lecture was in part a lecture but in part it was an opportunity for the Adepts in the room to share things they had learned. Professor Fin would broach a topic, discuss some basics then ask a question of a random person in the class. They would then talk about their personal experiences, what worked and what didn’t or they would pass the question to someone else. Felix was never chosen, likely on purpose.
When the professor asked an actual question, the random student he picked always either answered in three words or less, passed the question to someone else by pointing at them, or demonstrated.
Lastly, the whole thing lasted for an hour at which point the Adepts mostly just eyed Felix. Considering every other class he had had involving a lecture had lasted for 8 hours, he was surprised. The Adepts in the room didn’t actually leave either, they simply dispersed around the room as Felix was beckoned over to speak to Professor Fin.
When he first walked into this class, Felix wasn’t sure what he wanted to reveal. He heavily debated masking his abilities for almost the entire duration of the lecture. Ultimately though, he decided he wanted to reveal his abilities because as much as wanted to keep them secret and remain under the radar, he wanted to progress even more.
He could have continued going at it alone but having a professor and potentially peers in the form of the Adepts around the room, he was certain he could progress much faster. Direction and knowledge, even just in the form of how best to train was incredibly valuable to him because of how highly he valued his own time.
The other convincing factor for him, was how well everything went for him with Professor Sal and Ked when he revealed some of his soul abilities to them. He managed to save 40% of his week on top of being asked to assist with their research, experience that he was certain would help him down the road with his own ventures.
So, he decided that he would reveal almost everything to Professor Fin at least. Something about The Feline Professor, a vibe at best, gave Felix confidence that it would be worth it.
Fin hopped up onto a desk to be closer to eye level with Felix, “You are a student in the latest cycle right? Not some Adept masking their level?”
“Student.” Felix nodded.
“Who trained you in Mana Control?”
“Uh… Me? I’m an Integrated.”
“What? This early? We weren’t expecting to have any Integrateds from the 256th until next cycle.”
Felix shrugged.
Fin continued while scratching at their head with their left paw, “Dharel exempted you and… you’re an Integrated… Follow me.”
Following Professor Fin, Felix entered a door on the left of the room and headed into what appeared to be a large office. There was a desk and bookshelves on one side, both of which were filled with trinkets and on the other, another blackboard. This board was sleek and reflective, matching the one in the classroom they had just left except this one covered the entire wall, end to end and floor to ceiling.
“Alright, first things first.” Fin pointed at the board, “Can you draw me a circle? Any size will do.”
Felix tapped a finger against the board and almost instantly produced a circle. On this board, the mana appeared completely white.
“That was… fast. Is that some kind of skill I don’t know about?”
Felix shook his head, “I don’t have Mana Control as a skill on my Class, Profession or Race. Or anything… adjacent to it.”
“Alright… The best way to test your Mana Control is probably to have you produce increasingly complex shapes, drawings and diagrams on the board but that’s boring. How about we duel instead?”
Felix sighed, “How does a duel work?”
“It’s simple. Using this board, we designate two zones as goals on opposite ends of the board. The goal of the duel is simply to get a certain amount of mana into the opponents goal without allowing any into your own.”
Fin pressed their paw against the board on one end of the room then tapped at something on the board until their mana glowed red.
Felix sighed, “We can do it if you want but… I will win.”
Fin smirked, “Oh really? You do know I’m a professor right?”
“Where are the goals?”
Fin tapped at something else and two sections of the board lightly glowed, just enough to be obvious but not enough to obstruct the view of the glowing, colored mana.
Felix nodded then crossed his arms, not even bothering to touch the board. He pushed mana into the board from a few meters away then looked at Fin, “Can I start?”
Fin nodded and the board immediately flashed white, indicating Felix had won.
Fin just looked at Felix then the board with a confused expression on his face, “What…”
“You never said I couldn’t just push mana directly into the goal, right?”
The Professor was at a complete loss for words. To emphasize his point, Felix filled the entire board with his mana, an all consuming field of white filling the board from one side until it completely surrounded the small amount of red glowing mana Fin had started with. Then, Felix squeezed Fin’s mana until it was ejected out of the board.
Tentatively reaching forwards, Fin tapped the board with a claw in a random spot and tried to push mana into it. Felix could feel him trying but he barely needed to exert any effort to refuse him access.
“See what I mean? Up to 16 meters or so, it all feels the same.”
Fin looked at him then walked a dozen meters away to the other end of the office and Felix felt him constructing a spell form. Felix almost let him do it simply because he was impressed, he had never seen anyone other than himself raw cast a spell before. It was the simplest spell form possible, a node with a containing ring and, as he constructed it, Felix perfectly replicated the form on the board.
Right before Fin could finalize it though, Felix took control. With the spell form right in front of The Feline Professor, Felix morphed it into a perfect representation of his cat face then pulled it into their native spatial dimensions, making it instantly appear.
“So what now?”
Fin looked at, essentially a three dimensional picture of himself for a few seconds before nodding, “I have to be honest, had you not demonstrated, I would have said what you’re doing was impossible… You should seriously consider picking up Mana Control as a skill, even if just to get the Sage title.”
Felix shook his head, “I’d rather keep this as quiet as possible though… I already know and have accepted that it’ll get out eventually.”
Professor Fin pulled at his whiskers, “Well, maybe not. What you’re doing is so far outside the realm of possibility that as long as you don’t do what you just did in front of people, they are more than likely to make up their own explanations.”
Felix shrugged, unconvinced, “Hopefully. Is there any point in my taking this class?”
Fin smiled and nodded enthusiastically, “It will be my mission to make it worth your time. You said your limit was 16 meters, how much can you control at once? How accurately can you control it? Let’s take some measurements then we can spend the rest of the epoch pushing each and every one of your limits.”
Felix smiled, Professor Fin promising him exactly what he had hoped for, “Alright, let’s do it.”
They spent almost an hour taking various measurements in Fin’s office and The Professor even insisted on making a System contract with Felix to show his commitment towards keeping everything a secret. Felix couldn’t help but be immensely grateful, a feeling that largely grew from his relief that revealing his secrets didn’t immediately result in him being kidnapped, a worry he had been suppressing for some time now.
He still felt like he wanted to keep his abilities as secret as possible for the time being but he found he didn’t regret revealing them to any of his professor’s yet. Time would tell if it was the right decision but for the time being, he was happy with the outcome.
Walking back out into the classroom where the Adepts were still loitering about, Fin cast a quick sound spell that produced a slight jingle to get everyone’s attention, “Alright, this is Felix. He’s a new student this cycle that has been advanced to this class and you’ll see why in a moment. Felix has a unique, dark magic based skill he got from the 256th integration that lets him do some wild things with mana. To demonstrate, let’s have Alkor, Withrel and Kilenor at the board please.”
Three of the Adepts rose to their feet and walked over to the board at the front of the class.
“Felix, you go stand over there.” Fin pointed about a dozen meters from the board towards the center of the class.
“Alright, we’ve never done this before so we’ll iron out the rules as we go. Let’s try a three on one.” Fin tapped at the edge of the board and set it so there was a goal in the middle of the board.
“All you have to do is get any amount of mana into the goal. Felix, don’t let them. You may begin whenever.”
The three Adepts looked at each-other then at the other Adepts in the class, trying to determine what the trick was. Eventually one of them, Alkor, shrugged and pushed mana into the board.
Felix let them because otherwise it would have been an incredibly boring show having a permanently blank board. Alkor pushed the mana as fast as he could towards the goal and Felix let him.
As soon as the mana got within an inch of the goal, he ripped it free of Alkor’s control and wrote out: ‘Nice Try’ in an instant, at the top of the board.
A few of the Adepts in the audience chuckled but Alkor looked almost fearful. The other two tried pushing their mana towards the goal but this time, Felix didn’t even let them get anywhere close to it. Instead, he took control of and used their mana to form a very detailed image of Fin curled up, licking their paws.
The Adepts in the audience chuckled again and the three Adepts at the board combined their efforts. Felix simply pulled the mana from their grasp and added a background to his diorama before having his drawing of Fin stand up and berate his students with a speech bubble.
Fin joined the audience in laughing then had the three Adepts sit back down.
“Anyone else who would like to experience this is welcome to. We don’t actually need the board though, simply try to do anything with mana outside of your bodies and Felix will stop you.”
A few curious students attempted to form mana into shapes but Felix immediately pulled it all away from them and funneled all of it into the board. After almost a half hour of Adepts futilely trying, Fin put an end to it.
“We’ve taken some measurements and Felix would like to increase his proficiency with the skill so, we’re going to push his his limits.”
Withrel, one of the three that he had originally fought with the board, raised their hand, “What’s the skill called?”
A number of the audience nodded along, all very curious to know. Fin nodded and lied for Felix, “The System translated it to Mana Visualization. It’s a Unique skill that lets him essentially do anything with mana so long as he can visualize it. He’s spent plenty of time practicing on his own to get it to this point.”
“How do I pick up this skill? I have an Arcane rarity Class?” Kilenor looked at Fin then Felix in turn.
“Go join the 257th integration. It was a reward from a world event and Dark Magic. It may not be possible for anyone else to ever acquire it again.” Fin smiled, “Our best chance though, we could all help him reach Arch Sage, which shouldn’t take too long considering his… uniqueness, and he’ll be able to pass it on to all of us.”
The Adepts had a few more questions before finally deciding it was impossible for them to obtain the same skill for the time being. After that, everyone was actually excited to help and they started by having Felix stand right at the edge of his range and duel two Adepts.
It took them just under a minute to win, which they celebrated, before they tried again. After an hour of dueling from the limit of his range, Felix actually found his range extend and it became impossible for them to win from his current position.
After that, they split the board into sections and had him duel as many people as he could, at once. Instead of a traditional duel though, they came up with something new. The Adepts, along with Fin who participated sometimes, created a circle then Felix controlled a small dot of mana within that.
The Adepts were tasked with moving the circles around as quickly as they could with the goal of having the dot touch the outside. Felix, just had to avoid the circles.
It was a simple game that would have been trivial for Felix to win, were he not trying to do it in 18 simultaneous arenas. Each Adept, along with Fin, managed two circles, Felix maintaining 18 dots in a 6 by 3 grid on the board.
It only took him half an hour to master the game so they moved onto finding a new game that would challenge him.
Over the course of the next few hours, Felix was challenged and forced to his limits in every different way, speed, range, power and concurrent focus and he had already made notable progress. His effective cast range had reached 17 meters, increasing by just over a meter from their initial measurements.
His speed was slightly faster though, it was only a marginal increase barely outside their margin of error. Their initial measurement of his overall concurrent focus had improved drastically from what he last remembered though, had stagnated during the class. Fin used a different, more easily quantifiable and verifiable measurement but when converted to his made up measurement of spell levels, Felix realized he could cast 20 simultaneous levels.
At some point over the last few days, likely when he had finally gotten his mental computer functioning properly, he had drastically increased his overall focus. He likely could have even pushed it harder but he didn’t have the right spells to do so at the moment. He was already running into the problem of having multiple spells with overlapping forms which resulted in pseudo levels.
He could effectively cast 30 simultaneous Fire Bolts because the spell forms were all identical. Any amount of overlap resulted in more spell levels than he could actually maintain due to the similarities making it easier on his mind so, he was happy with their measurements of about 20 for now. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .