Ultimately, Felix’s preparations for the evaluations were lacking, or at least he felt that way as he saw all the other students in his cycle sparring, studying and doing whatever they could. The entire campus was more active even than when everyone had first showed up.

The library was often packed, the grounds full of people comparing notes, the professors constantly harassed everywhere they walked.

The large shift made Felix rather excited for the evaluations, or rather for them to be over.

The first evaluation on Felix’s schedule was Mana Structures. Walking into the designated classroom, the students were ordered by registration date then sent through a portal at the center of the room one by one.

The next person then had to wait anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes depending on the student. No one came back out of the portal though, clearly having gone through some other exit, a system intended to minimize the interaction between those that have and have not yet done the evaluation.

Unfortunately, Felix was at the very end of the registration list so he had to wait for everyone to go through ahead of him.

As he waited, the room slowly emptied until he was left completely alone. He didn’t have nerves to calm but Felix did find the solitude much more pleasant than the room filled with students. He only had a few minutes to enjoy it though before he was called in.

Stepping through the portal at the center of the room, Felix arrived into a room occupied solely by Director Amelia standing on a stool, a large table and the portal.

Felix approached the desk and Amelia pointed downwards at a sheet of parchment that stretched out over most of the desk, “Walk me through this. If you see flaws or improvements, describe them. If you can figure out what it does, state it.”

Looking down at the drawing, “How long do I have? Can I take a moment to examine it?”

She nodded, “You may. No longer than a minute though.”

Quickly memorizing the drawing, Felix kept his eyes open as he moved his consciousness into his Soul Garden and began analyzing.

The design was the most intricate and convoluted enchantment he had every tried to analyze though definitely not the most complex he had ever seen. Some he had seen in Ked’s lab, the Raven’s nests and especially the spatial enchantment in Inscripticae were vastly more complex.

This design though was convoluted in a way none of those ones had been. He suspected it had purposefully been obscured and made a complete mess but it didn’t change his distaste for it. All the other more complicated enchantments he knew split themselves into subsections and were more like multiple interconnected enchantments. This one felt impossible to break down into sections because of how intertwined everything appeared to be.

One minute in reality was just under 6 hours for him in his Soul Garden which was a lot of time normally but for this, he used every second.

At the end of the 6 hours he had taken, Felix still had no idea what the overall purpose of the enchantment was but, he did find an appreciation for the tenacity that went into creating it. Whatever it did, it essentially consisted of an amalgamation of thousands of different techniques and patterns just to make it function.

He could name the purpose of some of the components such as, an entire section that imbued a complicated attunement into the mana just so it would flow faster through some channels only to be reverted and wiped clean just afterwards.

There were thousands of these patterns though and the more he was able to identify, the more he realized they all worked together towards some goal he couldn’t identify.

Felix walked Amelia through the enchantment, describing the various functions he had identified but more importantly, the purpose of the various functions. He ventured guesses as to how they worked together and why but the more components he tried to combine into one system, the more confusing the whole thing was.

Amelia said nothing more than a single word at a time, her face giving away nothing. Felix also wasn’t proficient enough to read her soul’s reactions either so he was largely blind as to her reactions.

It took him just under 15 minutes to go over everything without endlessly guessing and once he had, he stopped and nodded to her, indicating he had finished.

She nodded as well and Felix walked behind her towards another portal at the end of the room but stopped and turned before he got there, “It’s over now right? What the hell is that?”

Amelia smirked and beckoned him back over, “This is an attempt at analyzing an intraform node.” Hopping up onto the table, Amelia walked onto the parchment and squatted down over one section, “This is the node it’s trying to examine. Everything else is designed to break down the node’s output into the basest components. Detect absolutely every shred of attunement, energy level, state and so on that is imbued into the mana.”

Felix wrinkled his nose in disgust, “There has to be easier ways to do this, right?”

“Yes and no. This was an attempt to do it all in a single ritual. Most of us would just go through a series of individual tests instead which are more time consuming but infinitely more modular. In theory, this was intended to replace those tools by being mass produced. It had far too many issues however-some of which you correctly pointed out-and was quickly abandoned.”

Felix nodded, “Thanks.”

She nodded in acknowledgement then Felix left the room, finding himself in the corridor just outside the room the classroom he had been waiting in for most of the day.

Ding You have gained 4 levels in [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (992 => 996)

SHIT! I am reminded once again why I try to contain all my profession related work in my Soul Garden, so The System can’t see it yet. Damn it, need to be more careful.

His next assessment was Group Combat and Felix didn’t really have anything he could prepare for it so he instead headed to his dorm where he continued working on his construct designs.

Walking into the designated class for Group Combat, the students were ordered once again in order of registration date but instead of just one portal, they were sent through a series of 4 of them. Like cash registers, an Adept would pop out of a portal and beckon the next person through once they were ready.

Felix once again had to wait until the room was empty. Even though there were four portals this time, the wait was about the same with each evaluation taking about an hour each but, the duration varied fairly wildly.

Stepping through into the final evaluation for the class, Felix appeared in a large empty room with a professor he had seen before on the council that had approved his entrance.

[?] Haris: Professor of Tactics & Strategy (Lvl ?)

Haris immediately recognized him, “Oh hey, you’re the 256th, the exile.”

Felix nodded as he remembered how Haris had been the last one to appear for the meeting and he had been thrown a pastry from Thakorm, “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you any baked goods.”

“Damn. Too bad. I definitely do accept bribes too. Oh well.” Haris smirked, “Evaluation is simple. There’s a team going into a dungeon. You can either command the team by communicating with them or control the dungeon to try and defea-”

“Dungeon.”

“Uh… Okay then.” Haris nodded and suddenly, all the walls in the room switched to a different view of a group in a dungeon.

“Can you tell me anything about the group?” Felix looked around the room, examining every angle provided to him.

“They’re all pulled from another cycle’s evaluation.”

Felix nodded, “So this is a simulation?”

“Correct. You will not be killing people here.”

I was more curious about how predictable they might be but… I guess that’s good too.

“What am I allowed to ask about them or rather, what information or answers are you allowed to give me?”

Haris smirked again, “Huh. Well, you’re allowed to pause the scene at any time. You can create anything within the dungeon that could reasonably appear within a dungeon of around their level. Obviously you have a limited quantity. Dungeon layout can also be changed. You can also see what items each of them have on them and in any spatial storages they brought.”

Felix nodded then immediately paused the scene as the group walked towards the entry door.

It took Felix an hour and a half but he finally managed to kill the group. His tactics mostly involved traps that wasted time and creatures that were annoying to slowly whittle the party down. When he finally did win, he realized he had been overestimating the group and expecting them to have good solutions to problems he could have solved. In reality, they died simply due to eventually making a mistake.

At first he thought it was a fluke he had won then he realized he probably could have just overwhelmed them to force a mistake much faster. They were bound to do so eventually and constantly throwing them at new objects without any time to rest in between would have been much faster and more likely to win.

Sighing as he realized his mistake, Felix left, somewhat disappointed in himself, and headed to Ked’s lab to find Ked.

He found Ked at a desk in the back looking over a construct the size of a large vehicle and he approached, “I have evaluations scheduled for tomorrow but I’m not really in Constructs and Elementals anymore… right?”

Ked nodded, “Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ve already got a pretty good idea of where you’re at. I won’t have trouble measuring your growth.”

Felix nodded, “Alright then. I guess that’s all.”

Right up until the evaluation on the 4th in Soul Manipulation, Felix read through various texts he had scanned, harvested his computer growth farms and worked on various projects.

The Soul Manipulation exam was the oddest yet as Felix was once again led into an empty room with just Professor Fen, “Alright this exam is pretty simple. I’m gonna attack your soul, lightly at first then slowly ramp up the strength until you pass out. Don’t resist, I don’t want to kill you.”

That’s why this one was so fast for everyone else and I didn’t have to wait long.

Professor Fen started and Felix felt nothing. Over the course of a few minutes, her feline face looked increasingly strained but Felix still felt nothing. It took a grand total of 15 minutes for her to finally give up, faltering to one knee and catching her breath.

Felix looked down at her, “So what now?”

She chuckled, “You’re that kid my husband likes so much, right?”

Felix frowned, “Fin?” He had suspected but wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t siblings.

She nodded then continued to heave for a minute, “Normally I’d just measure your soul but… you’re an integrated, right? System masks it so… You don’t have a skill or item protecting your soul, do you?”

Felix shook his head.

“So you just have… Have you gotten to the point where you can affect others?”

“No. Or at least, I’ve never tried.”

She nodded, finally standing fully upright again, “Alright. I guess you can leave then.”

Felix’s brow furrowed, “What about the evaluation?”

“Yeah, good question. I have no clue what to do with you. There are some students like Melody that grew up around multiple God’s auras and can fully resist my attacks. I can always then estimate their soul strength with other methods though. In her case, I can also have her affect my soul and quantify that. You, I have nothing so… I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

Felix shrugged and walked through the portal on the other side of the room, unsure whether or not he should be worried about his grades or not.

Heading back to his dorm, Felix found Melody leaning against the wall just outside of his room, “How’d your evaluations go?”

Felix shrugged, “Fine I guess. Wasn’t expecting or even hoping for anything so… good?”

She shrugged, “Well, I’m glad then.”

Felix opened the door and Melody stepped in front of him-as he had expected her to-but she immediately looked back at him, “What is that?”

Before Felix could ask what she was talking about, she jumped with ridiculous speed into his dorm and at the large open space intended for rituals.

Felix closed the door behind himself then walked over to see what she was talking about.

On the floor, in front of Melody was a metal box. The box was intricately carved chrome with slight red accents that didn’t have any indication of what it was whatsoever.

Melody leaned down to touch it but as soon as her finger touched the box, the entire thing burst into flames and her hand was completely charred. She yelped and jumped back as the flesh on her hand slowly blew away revealing nothing beneath it. Her severed hand would grow back in a day or so but still, the event had Felix seriously doubting whether or not he should be touching it himself.

Ultimately though, he figured he could regenerate a hand in a few hours through meditation and manually directed healing and so, he reached forwards and touched the box.

As soon as his finger touched the box, it burst into flame once again and Felix recoiled. He stopped himself though as he realized the flames hadn’t hurt him whatsoever.

Reaching forwards again, he lifted the box that was now permanently aflame and pried it open.

Inside, there was a metal plate and what appeared to be a coin. Felix picked up the metal plate which was covered in beautiful script and began reading, immediately feeling Melody’s breath on his ear as she read along as well.

Felix Kade,

We have taken notice of your unique talents at the academy and have decided to invite you to this epoch’s Ascension day on the 200th. The coin within this box will act as the invite and holds the anchor to the lobby on the reverse. Share this at your peril as it is entirely unique to yourself. You are permitted to bring along a single guest with you though be aware that you are responsible for their actions during the course of the event.

In the hopes that you will consider this invite and to encourage you to accept it, we have also provided a gift alongside the invite. On the backside of this plate, you will find the anchor to a warehouse containing gifts specifically tailored to your needs. Please keep us in mind as you use these gifts to further your goals and consider us favorably in the future. The warehouse will remain accessible for one epoch upon receipt of this invite.

The Dragon’s Mother’s Brood.

Felix didn’t care much about the invite but was just happy to have finally gotten the corpses he had been promised. All of his thoughts were interrupted however, by Melody jumping up and down behind him and squealing like a little girl.

“How in the multiverse did you get noticed let alone invited to Ascension day? No one outside of the cults- I don’t even think a non-Drakene has attended one of- I’ve been wanting to go to one of these- I can’t believe I get to- You’re bringing me, right? Holy fucking- You don’t get how big of a deal this is, do you?”

Felix shrugged, “I guess not?”

Melody guffawed then took a breath, “Ascension day celebrates Tekragoraxius’ ascension to godhood. It’s a Drakene exclusive holiday-or was-that, even amongst them, was nearly impossible to get into. Only a few thousand are invited every epoch. Not only were you invited but they got you a gift to curry favor. Felix, this a huge deal.”

I get she wants to mask our meetings and the gifts she’s offering and all that but… did she have to make this such a public thing?

“If I agree you can be my plus one, will you promise me to keep this a secret?”

Melody nodded as quickly as possible, “Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. Can do… What part do I have to keep a secret?”

Felix shook his head, “All of it.”

“Right… We’re going to need to buy outfits though and… well it’ll be pretty obvious what’s happening when we buy traditional Drakene Ascension day outfits…”

Felix sighed, “Just keep it a secret from everyone here as long as you can. If anyone figures it out and asks, you were invited and you decided to bring me as your plus one.”

Melody shook her head, “Can’t do that. If they thought I was invited and had a plus one, my dad would force his way into being the plus one.”

“Your dad… the Archon… a God?”

She nodded, “Yes, or one of his Demi Gods. I don’t think you appreciate how big of a deal this is.”

“Okay fine. Let’s just keep this as… lowkey as we can, alright?”

“Sure. It will get out though. We’re going to have to commission our outfits in the next couple dekads for them to be ready in time. That alone…”

Felix sighed, “Is it even possible to stay completely under the radar…”

Melody shrugged, “You’d have to make some sacrifices. Dueling my brother, your grades, those classes you had upgraded, hanging out with me, being integrated…”

Shaking his head, Felix stowed the coin, note then box, “Right, so… impossible even if I wanted to be…”

“Pretty much. Why would you want to though?”

“There are Gods in the multiverse, Demi-Gods, a System. Countless beings that can essentially do whatever they want with and to me. The further I can keep myself from all that, the better.”

Melody winced, “Yeah… Not really possible. Your best bet is befriending someone strong enough to make it not worth messing with you.”

“The only person that strong is Rhonan. I’m not befriending Rhonan.”

She shook her head, “You don’t need to be protected from everyone just anyone that would care enough to bother with you.”

Right so with my mana control, soul, the computers I can make and all the other shit… I need to somehow befriend Rhonan. Or The System I guess…

Melody squinted a little as she slowly walked over to the sitting area in Felix’s dorm room, “Interesting timing too…”

Felix sat across from her, “What do you mean?”

“Well… I guess it’s not interesting just… the first public integration event should be opening itself up at the end of the dekad…”

Felix’s jaw dropped a little, “Wait… what?”

Melody nodded, clearly thinking Felix knew what she was thinking, “Yeah. They seem to know more about it than I do. I wonder if my father is holding out on me…”

Felix shook his head, “What are you talking about?”

She looked at him then sighed, “If the message and gift were from anyone else, I would think you were being targeted for recruitment. If the event turns out to be restricted to specific levels and maybe the school gets enough slots for all the students…”

Felix exhaled in realization, “They would need to get ahead of recruitment at the end of the epoch. Get students thinking about who they want to ingratiate themselves with.”

“Exactly. Then if you have a faction in mind, you may focus-even unconsciously-on specific resources or choose different rewards…”

“Which would later seem like a sunken cost and mentally attach them to that faction.”

“Yup. I bet you lots of people don’t even realize they’re being manipulated. If the gift is good enough-and they’re dumb enough-the faction will just be at the top of their mind…”

Felix tilted his head, “You said if it was anyone else though?”

“Well yeah… The Brood doesn’t recruit non-Drakene or well… Dragons.”

“Right. I was invited to the party though.”

“Yeah. That’s true. Maybe they are trying to recruit you.”

“You know anything else about this event?”

Melody shook her head, “Nah. Family just keeps trying to rope me into training with them. Aren’t exactly getting the message that I don’t want to fight.”

Felix frowned, “You fight in Group Combat, don’t you?”

She snorted, “Nope, not really. I just play music and use my skills to calm everyone’s souls. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m helping my team or the enemy team more.”

“Why… not fight? And if not, why not become a pacifist?”

Melody sighed, “My parents wanted me to become the right hand to a god then become one myself. I don’t want anything to do with the gods though. I can’t become a pacifist because I’d probably reach the S grade even faster and The System won’t protect you in the S grade.”

“So you’re avoiding leveling?”

“Sort of. That and… if I fight…” Melody sighed, “I’m not rebelling, I’m not fighting against them, I’m not fighting for someone else, I’m not fighting for myself or… anything like that. I’m not even specifically not fighting. I’m just… not.” Even Melody seemed somewhat unsure of what she was saying, or possibly how to say what she was trying to convey.

“So instead of fighting for anything or avoiding fighting you’re just… not?”

Melody chuckled, “Yeah, it sounds dumb. I just want to enjoy… life I guess. The moment. I’m not getting involved, I’m not wasting my time thinking about not fighting or growing or doing what they want. I’m just-”

“Not.” Felix finished.

“Yeah…”

Felix shook his head, “That might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard… not you’re reasoning, what you are doing. So,” Felix sighed, “this event. Will you participate if given the chance?”

Melody shrugged, “Yeah. Won’t get far if it’s all combat but from what I’ve heard, they’re usually really cool and interesting so…”

Felix half shrugged, “Lots of fun stuff to do and enjoy?”

Melody smiled, “I hope so.”

“So why learn the… thing, Peace is teaching me? Why spend so much time acclimating to my Soul Garden?”

Melody’s smile grew wild, “Cause it’s fun. Like you, I do find the process of growing and improving fun, maybe not as much though. Also… the stuff Peace is teaching us and making my reactions faster through a constructed memory… I don’t think my dad’s ever even dreamed of stuff like this.”

Felix shook his head, “Can you even fight?”

Melody winced, “Against most people, yes… sort of. Against you, my trickery is futile so… I’m kind of helpless. Not really but… Anyways, against normal people, I can hold my own.”

“I see. Well, I’ve got plans for the rest of the night and the break day tomorrow, I take it you’re here because you want to acclimatize to my Soul Garden?”

She nodded and reached her hands forwards, a veritable stack of books appearing on them, “Can you bring these in with me?”

“Already done.”

She swapped out the stack a few more times, Felix’s skill passively scanning them as she did, until she was satisfied and sat on one of the couches.

Felix sat next to her and gripped her wrist, pulling her consciousness into his Soul Garden.

He let Grim bring her her books and mostly just ignored her at that point, moving on to other tasks he had set for himself.

Hey Grim, I didn’t realize I was using so much of the computer for memories. How much was lost?

Well… Yes and no. We still had a lot of garbage from when you were testing the skill and I set it up so that was lost first. Most importantly though, the books you’ve scanned in the library here, are worth anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of normal books.

Woah. The capacity before the computer was in the low hundreds of thousands too…

Yeah, that’s why you had to forget some of them. It just wasn’t possible to keep them all.

I think it’s time I start inscribing spells onto tiles.

For the integration event, that’s great. You aren’t allowed spatial storage items in class though and you don’t have a ton of free room in your Soul Space so…

Right… Maybe I don’t have to have a bunch of tiles. What if I just… used my robes? Created spell forms then inserted them into my robes.

Then pulled them out when you need them? That sounds kind of dangerous, what if they accidentally activate while your outer cloak enchantment is drawing mana?

Oh shit. Didn’t think about that.

Grim offered Felix a mental shrug as he conveyed his indifference, You could probably just use… me.

Like a spell book? Your pages can hold mana just like my robes can?

Similarly, yeah. You’d have to pull the spell form out of my pages before filling it with mana but…

Felix nodded excitedly, There’s a lot more room.

Yeah and I’m pretty good at reading your thoughts at this point so I can always have the spell you want right at the front.

You sure you’re okay with this? This puts you in danger, right?

Grim mentally shrugged, More but… My body is pretty durable. I’m not too worried unless you fight a god or something.

Wait… how many of the books from my head could you store?

All of them. The issue is that I store things… differently than you do and so it would take forever to get even a single one of those books from me into your head. Converting everything back would take… a long time.

I see. In a worst ca-

Yeah, I’m already backing everything up. I just lag behind a bit so if you had to completely restore everything, you might lose the most recent day or so. Especially if you scanned a bunch of big books.

Okay, thanks.

Pulling Grim out of his Soul Space and holding him, for the first time in a long time, Felix remembered how comically large Grim was. At almost half a meter tall and with a binding that was almost too thick to actually grip, Grim was unwieldy to say the least.

Unfortunately, they both knew that if this was going to work, Felix would have to hold Grim because Grim couldn’t keep up with Felix’s speed by himself. For the time being, Felix shoved his hand into the leather strap that wrapped around the center of Grim’s girth but it definitely wasn’t a permanent solution.

Starting with the simplest of spells, a Fire Bolt that was now too weak to damage even the couches he sat on, Felix almost instantly created the spell form in the air in front of him. He used as little mana as possible though to create the spell form making it look rather thin and sickly.

From there, he carefully took the spell form and lowered it towards one of Grim’s empty pages. The spell form sank in and appeared on the page in a light blue ink. They waited a few minutes then Felix, still feeling the mana within the page, carefully removed the spell and cast it.

Though it was extraordinarily slow, it was a huge success that they hoped was indicative of future successes.

As they were in Felix’s dorm and he was stuck maintaining physical contact with Melody, they couldn’t really test anything too flashy. Felix had plenty of spell forms though and the ability to almost endlessly create them so, he began creating everything he could think of that was safe to cast and embedding them within Grim’s pages.

Felix lifted Melody from the wrist he had gripped earlier and dragged her body over so he could stand in the open ritual area. Her body remained limp and being in the C grade as she was, it was hard to actually hurt her so he barely thought about it as he flicked his wrist and flung her body limply behind him, to get it out of the way.

They didn’t cast anything that was remotely harmful to anyone in their grade, restricting themselves to spells that were unnecessarily complicated and expensive for training purposes and spells that Felix used often.

Their goal for Felix’s break day was to get the synergy between them to be as seamless as possible. First there was the hand off where Felix took the spell from out of Grim’s pages. If he pulled too hard or pulled before Grim released it, the spell form itself would tear before Grim’s pages ever did. There was also the spell readying which involved Grim flipping his pages to the spell Felix was looking for.

Neither of them thought it was realistic for Felix to be able to create and embed a new spell into Grim during combat so they ignored that step for now. They would just have to prepare things ahead of time.

The Spell Formation exam on the 6th was rather simple as Felix was simply tasked with creating the most efficient spell form that would create a snake made of flames.

What he ended up with wasn’t really up to his own standards but it was functional. The snake was created using a number of shaping nodes in series but he managed to organize them in a way that made them somewhat more elegant. It also didn’t really act like a snake but he wasn’t sure if that was expected or not and he didn’t really have the experience to execute that at the moment.

That night, Felix and Grim took every minute they had constructing various spell forms and embedding them within Grim for the next day. It wasn’t wise for Felix to be completely changing the way he fought and testing it for the first time in an evaluation but, he didn’t really have any other choice. He also much preferred fighting with the new spells they had come up with rather than trying to deal damage with spells that felt essentially useless.

Most of what he had been doing up to this point was distracting people, erecting barriers and interrupting casts. All of those were relatively easy and didn’t require anything special. To actually deal damage though-damage significant enough to be able to fight anything in his grade or above-Felix really needed better spells and better nodes.

Withrel had offered some and Felix had found a number of others in the books he had scanned in the library. The issue he had faced though was that the nodes were complicated and alone, accounted for anywhere from 4 to 50 spell levels even for the simplest spells.

He still wasn’t casting anything on the top end of the complexity scale yet as he couldn’t even create them once to embed in Grim’s pages but those nodes were outliers for the most part. He had briefly tried creating part of a spell then building the rest within Grim’s page but once he pulled it back out, they simply deteriorated too quickly.

He found his limit was around 40 spells levels within Grim at which point he couldn’t hold off the deterioration himself. He just wasn’t able to hold a spell form of that complexity or greater stable in his own mind.

The Solo Combat evaluation was just as Felix had expected, a duel.

Walking through the portal when it was his designated time, Felix stepped into a much larger room than his evaluations. Otherwise though, it was almost identical with dark, uniform walls, floor and ceiling, almost like he had been transported into a box. The only other individual in the room was a Professor Felix had never seen before.

[?] Auren: Eramith’s Grand Huntsman (Lvl ?)

The professor had a serious expression and seemed to constantly wear a slight frown, judging from the ease with which it sat upon his visage. He was some kind of humanoid but at this point, Felix was pretty certain that anyone with a Rare race or above had some kind of distinguishing feature.

For Auren, it was his eyes and long ears. His eyes were a dark orange which was somewhat odd but not overly distinctive, especially not in comparison to his pupils which shifted shape at least 7 times since Felix walked into the room. As for his ears, instead of being slightly pointed upwards like an elf’s, Auren’s ears were much longer and stretched straight backwards, past the back of his head. He also seemed to have multiple sets of ear drums, or just holes, all along his ears.

The professor nodded as Felix approached, “You the last one?”

Felix nodded in confirmation as there was no one else left in the class when he had left, something he was used to by now.

“You more used to fighting creatures or people?”

Felix answered immediately, completely shocked by the question, “Creatures”

Auren nodded once, “Choose whatever you want from the menu. It’s better to kill something than to die.”

Felix was confused for all of a brief moment until a menu appeared and he understood.

The menu had a long list of creatures Felix could choose from of various levels and rarities ranging from the middle of the D grade to the bottom of the B grade. Based on what Auren had said, his getting stomped by a creature at the top of the list was worse than killing something at the bottom.

Whether or not that was true though, Felix had a burning desire to pick the strongest thing on the list because the consequences of losing here were minor. The System would keep him from dying and this combat was the starting point, not a deciding factor for his grades.

Looking right at the top of the list, Felix almost started salivating.

[B - Ancient] Hellfire Ashound (Lvl 2091)

I wonder what kind of title I’d get for killing this. Also, Hellfire and Ancient… does that mean Hell is or rather, was a real place? So many questions.

Every logical part of his brain knew that it was a terrible idea to pick the creature at the top of the list but at the same time, he had so many questions and didn’t ultimately care about the consequences of losing.

Without consciously reading, though his mind passively memorized, the rest of the list, Felix picked the top dog creature as his opponent.

Auren, knowing what Felix had picked, sighed as he vanished from the room.

In the couple of seconds that followed while Felix waited, he made sure to retrieve Grim and wedge his hand into his cover. He knew nothing about the creature but he made some assumptions that he thought were fair.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He assumed it had some kind of affinity for fire and heat so he mentally restricted himself from using those spells. From there, his assumptions were based on much weaker evidence and so he only used them to inform his opening moves.

As he had Grim flip to a page filled with a mini blizzard spell form, the temperature in the room suddenly started climbing.

In an instant, the creature appeared before him, across the room. A massive wolf like creature made of a soft and dark grey like material. Its body was wide though and less lithe than a wolf’s and as its head turned-ash precipitating down from its neck-the bright orange eyes locked onto Felix, the only other thing in the room.

The creature pounced at the same instant as Felix dropped the blizzard spell in front of him.

Diving through the spell without any regard for the spell whatsoever, the creature was slowed just slightly as frost began to creep up its side. The slow didn’t last long though as the heat being generated from its body mounted as it ran.

When it first moved, Felix found himself rather disappointed with how slow the creature was. He could immediately tell it was slower than Tanryel was. As it ran though, and the heat in the room rapidly grew, the creature’s speed did as well.

In a fraction of a second, Felix’s confidence faltered as the creature closed the distance between them faster than he could cast two spells in succession.

Oh shit.

Using his own focus to create spells, Felix cast Force spells to launch himself backwards and into the air while pulling another spell out of Grim at the same time.

As Felix’s body shot backwards, a concussive blast reverberated through the room, sending a plume of ash outwards in every direction and knocking the Ashound back a few meters.

The ash slowly settled to the ground but the hound didn’t let up, leaping through the cloud and revealing its now mostly exposed, magma like, body.

A grand total of a half second had passed since the creature had appeared and already, it had exceeded Felix’s base speed multiple times over. His spells made it possible for him to maintain distance but he was fully expecting the creature to have at least a single ranged attack which meant, it wasn’t nearly enough.

Felix pushed himself to be faster and consciously engaged his conviction. He knew taking this fight was idiotic and his chances of winning were essentially nonexistent but none of that mattered, he wouldn’t give up. He needed every tool he had to win and so activating Reaper’s Movement and Sense was necessary.

Knowing this, the billowing shadow trails-that hinted at something more meaningful with the glints of color they provided-appeared behind every one of Felix’s movements, shrouded his body and blackened his eyes.

In an instant, his speed nearly caught up to the hound’s as the world around him slowed to a much more bearable pace and his body tightened.

With all of his Reaper’s skills engaged, Felix experienced an odd sensation for the first time ever where his Intelligence felt like it was suddenly his lowest stat. That feeling distracted him enough that the hound was able to release a solid beam of fire and ash at Felix.

He quickly flicked his left arm out of the way but even having dodged it by a few inches, he felt the heat sear his flesh as his interlocking cloak enchantment faltered and sparked.

What the hell…

Grim mentally shrugged, Hellfire? It… fucks mana maybe?

Well shit.

Felix’s control over mana was, as far as he knew, absolute. Casting a Phantom Step next within a foot of the beam had no adverse effects but, he couldn’t pay attention to and manually control everything. His enchantment was supposed to alleviate that but brushing his attention against it, he felt the channels themselves burning away.

Kicking off the invisible platform of Force he had cast below his own foot, Felix launched himself to the left as he released a Glacial Blast into the creature’s face. It was just a cone of Force and Cold wrapped up into a blast but it was extremely effective. Over half of the ash that formed the creature’s face was frozen solid and fell to the ground as it was knocked back a step.

Missing half a head didn’t seem to affect the creature much though as it practically bounced off the ground, swiping at Felix as he desperately tried to keep himself away.

The creature missed his body but managed to shred the bottom of Felix’s robes that hung loose both searing his flesh from the proximity, destroying the enchantment and setting his robes alight.

This is why I don’t like flowing garments.

Releasing a burst of Force, the hound that was midair was thrown backwards and skidded along the floor as Felix danced across the wall and started circling the outside of the room.

Ash was strewn everywhere and a billowing wake followed the hound allowing it to vanish into it as soon as it recovered.

The heat from its body, the mana it was burning, and the sheer light it was giving off made it visible even through the cloud as an demonic silhouette.

Dropping a large scale storm spell on the ground, the first Felix had ever used in actual combat, Felix prepared a couple Force bursts and Phantom Steps for when the hound reappeared. His speed had already been exceeded in the last half second so he knew to be ready.

Leaping out of the cloud and scattering more ash in every direction, the hound was even faster this time as it leapt through the Storm Felix had left behind.

Its body was frozen and buffeted as chunks of ash solidified and were knocked off in quick succession. It’s momentum though, never faltered.

The hound, ignoring the spell entirely and completely exposing its molten interior landed on the other side of the storm and bounded off the ground toward Felix.

Casting his two Phantom Steps in quick succession, Felix barely dodged a swipe and a bite before the hound soared past him.

Not willing to waste any opportunity, Felix released a spinning Lance of Force and Ice into the creature’s back before it landed, striking it and freezing a chunk of its igneous center solid.

The magma cooled and froze into a black rock that slurped off the side of the creature and fell to the ground, taking with it the back half of its right rear leg.

At the same moment as Felix began to feel hope leaking through his pure determination, he felt his left leg get removed and cauterized in the same instant.

The hound had been within his sight the entire time so he had no idea what had struck him until he swung his head around and caught sight of a completely separate hound, beneath him now.

Completely baffled by the appearance of a second hound and feeling slightly cheated, Felix was struck again, this time losing his left hand by a third hound that had appeared from nowhere.

The pain was muted instinctively but the ridiculousness of the situation caused Felix’s attention to waver and his Reaper skills to flicker. In the instant he slowed, a beam of molten ash struck his chest as a fourth hound appeared to join the other three in devouring his body.

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

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

Ding You have become more proficient with the Class skill: [Legendary] Reaper’s Body (Novice I => Novice II)

Waking up in a similar recovery room to the one under the arena, Felix sat up and spun around so he could get to his feet. There weren’t any other students recovering in the room, the rest no doubt long gone as he was the last student.

He wasn’t alone in the room though, standing at the foot of his bed was a disappointed and slightly disgusted looking Auren.

As Felix hopped off the bed and walked towards the end of the bed to leave, Auren shook his head, “I told you, killing anything is better than dying.”

Felix shrugged, “Sure but when am I ever going to get that opportunity again?”

Auren’s face contorted with disgust, “In class? Any time you want? Just come by my office or find an Adept managing one of the combat trial rooms.”

Felix winced, “Okay well… I didn’t know that…”

“Did you actually think you could win?”

Felix chuckled, “For… two moments in total I think. Right at the start when I saw how slow it was and when I finally actually did damage to it, right before I got hit by the second hound.”

Auren nodded once, still not looking overly impressed by Felix’s performance.

Felix didn’t really care what they thought though, he was still riding the high of the fight, “Just to be sure, what was that thing and why were there four of them?”

“A creature from before System times that was reintroduced in an event or something. Break off enough ash and with enough heat, a new hound is born. Makes them ideal for that list.”

Felix smirked and nodded, “Cause they’re essentially a renewable resource. Cool.”

“Are you proud of that fight?”

Felix locked eyes with Auren and noticed how serious his face was, “I don’t know about proud.”

Auren lifted his chin towards Felix, “You’re smiling.”

“I was definitely fun.”

Auren shook his head at that answer as he walked towards the door, mumbling, “You’re worse than Rhonan’s freaks.”

Before Felix could ask anything or respond, Auren was gone.

Grim chuckled in Felix’s mind, Well, ignoring the outcome of the fight, I’d say our new method of spell casting was a resounding success.

I agree. Definitely not a permanent solution but for now… very functional.

Heading to the lab, Felix found Professor Sal who immediately grabbed and had Felix help her bind a large crab like construct. Once they were done, Felix waited around and the Professor sighed with immense exasperation before turning to him, “What?”

“My evaluation scheduled for today…”

She cringed then shook her head, “I already told you I’m not evaluating you purely on theory. I’ll just pay attention to you in the lab and make up grades from that. Just make sure to be in the lab at least once a dekad.”

Felix nodded then left and headed straight for Fin’s office, despite being a day early.

He found him exactly where he had expected, in his office attached to the class he seemed to own.

Looking up from some parchment he had been walking on on his desk, Professor Fin nodded as Felix walked in, “Felix. What can I do for you?”

“Figured I was a… special case for tomorrow’s evaluation. Your… wife, had trouble with our evaluation so I figured I’d make sure you were ready.”

Fin cocked his head, “My wife had trouble evaluating you? Why?”

“Integrated. Can’t measure soul strength and.. stronger than normal soul I guess.”

Fin nodded, “I see. Well, I figure we can probably skip tomorrow’s evaluation. I already measured you in every way I could see fit to at the start of the term. I can simply use those measurements.”

Felix nodded, “In that case, I’ll let you get back to whatever you’re doing and I’ll see you next dekad.”

“Of course. Ah, before you leave… I hear you used to work as an enchanter in Telviras and that you never used the standard enchanting tools to examine enchantments.”

Felix frowned, “You looked into me?”

Fin smirked, “Yes and no. I didn’t send anyone or go myself. Many people looked into you after-and some before-your duel, I simply requested a copy of the information they had already gotten.”

“I see.”

Damn. Flying under the radar really is impossible, isn’t it.

“Would you be… willing to help me diagnose the issues with his spell form?” Fin pointed downwards at the parchment he had been walking on.

Shrugging, Felix constructed the spell form, he had already passively scanned, in the air in front of him, “Sure.”

Surprisingly to Felix, the spell form was at most a 20th level spell. It wasn’t overly complex or convoluted though Felix wasn’t exactly sure what it did. Similar to the spell forms Withrel had shown Felix, there were minimal nodes and the channels seemed to provide shape and function to the spell.

“Is it dangerous if I push mana into this?” Felix looked over at Fin who had stepped across the air and walked right up to the edge of the spell form Felix was holding.

Fin shrugged, “Possibly. It might explode.”

Felix began, very slowly, filling the spell with mana and examined the flow, state, attunement and energy level of the mana as it traveled.

Pointing at one section in particular with a claw, Fin nodded mostly to himself, “It’s here but…” Looking up at Felix, “Any ideas?”

Felix nodded immediately, “Energy level is too high, the mana is traveling way too quickly and because of that turbulence, is gaining a subtle attunement.”

“Ah, I see.” Fin nodded and Felix reabsorbed all the mana.

“Was that my evaluation you were trying to sneak in?”

Fin shook his head, “No no. I’m just trying to get better with my mana senses and using you is much faster than going through a battery of tests to check my answers.”

Felix nodded, “I see. Well, good luck with that.”

Heading back to his dorm room so he had some privacy, Felix constructed the spell form for a portal in front of him and swapped in the anchor The Dragon’s Brood had provided him.

The portal opened and the light from his dorm trickled through offering the only light on the other side. Casting his own light with an afterthought, Felix stepped through but held the portal behind him open with his focus.

His light stretched out hundreds of meters in every direction and yet, he couldn’t find a wall or ceiling for the room he stepped into. All around him were clear tubs of liquid containing preserved corpses floating about.

Walking further through the room and allowing the portal to close behind him, Felix wandered around to try and create a rough mental catalogue of everything there.

There were everything from tiny furry creatures to massive scaled monstrosities shoved into tubs almost a hundred meters in diameter. Each of the tubs was thankfully labeled but, the bestiaries Felix had already memorized proved insufficient as many of the names were completely new to him. He put bestiaries on his to-scan list for the next time he was in the Eramith library.

There must be… thousands of corpses here…

Sensing Felix’s excitement, Grim teased him, Remember you asked if “you should have just said No?”

Yeah well… The consequences haven’t quite come to bear just yet on that one. Enough of that, where do I start?

The question was entirely rhetorical as the both of them knew that trying to organize the room into any meaningful order or structure was futile. Starting from the creature closest to the door, Felix began cutting, absorbing and dissecting.

After a couple trips to the library and almost a hundred creatures cut into, Felix hadn’t altered a single thing on his or his Persona’s body when his gruesome work was interrupted.

Integration Event

The integration of a universe is a big event both for those living within the multiverse and those being introduced to it. Factions get access to individuals they can recruit. New souls are added into the fold. Resources are distributed and harvested for everyone in the multiverse.

This event is considered a resource, soul and artifact integration event. A planet, containing vast resources grown within the 256th universe was combined with integrateds from another planet and the ancient remains of a long lost planet to create something entirely new. To be considerate towards the new souls, there will be a level restriction of 1499 on this event and no one exceeding this level will be permitted to enter.

Any resources found within the event can be freely removed from the event up to a limit per participant. Everything within the event has been assigned a point value. Completing quests within the event can increase an individual’s allotted points and allow them to remove further resources from the event. Defeating an opposing participant and causing them to surrender will add their point value to yours and ban them from reentering the event. The event will remain open for one epoch from the day it is opened, two dekads from now.

All participants will obtain temporary access to an event inventory whilst within the event space. Everything that originated from within the event can only be placed within this specialized inventory. Defeating another participant and forcing their surrender within the event space will empty their inventory into yours. Items within the specialized inventories can only be retrieved on the outside once the event is complete and will be delivered to each participant individually.

As a student at Eramith, you have been given a slot to attend this integration event. When it is opened, you will be provided an event transport marble that will allow you to enter and exit the event. When used, the marble will return you to the location you last used it both within and outside of the event. If using the marble of another participant, your return location will be synced. Any portals cast within the event must only target another location within the event. No portals crossing the event boundary are permitted.

Oh shit. I wonder what kind of resources and ancient artifacts they are. Also, there’s an integrated race in there? Do they count as participants? Are we supposed to fight them for the resources? Are we allowed to kill them? Wait… integrateds from a planet… what are the odds those are…

Grim winced mentally, I hope not.

Me too. There’s no way they’re ready.

The message appearing, breaking Felix out of his trance, caused him to manually check the time and prioritize. He knew an event was coming but knowing what it was and that it would be open for an entire epoch, with participants coming and going freely, changed things.

Now he knew what to prepare.

Leaving the warehouse and opening a portal back to Eramith, Felix hurried off back to his dorm so he could start working on everything he thought he would need.

Somewhat expected though still surprising him, he found Melody just outside his dorm room, waiting for him.

Melody nodded to him as he opened the door for them, “You got the message I take it?”

“Of course.”

“It says integrateds…”

Felix shook his head, “Yeah I know. I’m hoping it isn’t but we’ll see.”

“What races did your integration consist of?”

“Just humans.”

She looked at him with a dour expression, “If it is them, you won’t be able to protect them.”

“I know. They can handle themselves. If this is them, The System decided they can handle themselves or wants to kill them. I left, they are their own responsibility, not mine.”

Melody nodded, “Okay, good. As for the actual event, it’s a long term event and we can freely enter and exit.”

Felix nodded, the conversation moving exactly in the direction he had hoped, “Alliances, trades and temporary vaults.”

“Yes, exactly. Have you thought about who you’re going to ally yourself with? Who’s vault you’re going to use?”

Felix shook his head, “No one? I’m planning on creating my own vault.”

Melody smirked but closed her eyes and shook her head as well, indicating mixed feelings, “While I commend your… It’s not a good idea. There are going to be huge alliances working together in there. It will be nearly impossible to get anything done without-”

Felix shrugged, “Then so be it. Maybe I change my mind later but I’m going to start out at least, alone.”

Melody sighed, “Alright fine. There are some other things you should know. Quests will split their rewards based on contribution, calculated by The System as evenly as possible. If it’s just one, unsplittable reward-”

Felix waved her along having no intention whatsoever of ever doing a quest in a group, “It goes to the highest contribution, got it. What else?”

“Standard multiverse rules apply, of course.”

Felix sighed, “The what?”

Melody donned an expression of deep confusion, “The… Even though you’re integrated The System should have shown them to you… at some point… whatever, basically no war crimes.”

Felix locked eyes with her, “You’re going to need to be more specific.”

“You don’t have any disease, plague, biological weapons, highly contagious, airborne self replicating toxins or anything like that, right?”

Felix shook his head rapidly, “Nope.”

Although… Endless Hunger might count, not that I plan on ever bringing that out.

“No excessive use or spreading of curses, while not technically a rule you should avoid killing people and definitely don’t true-kill people. Which obviously shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Curses, got it. Nova should be fine, right?”

Melody nodded, “Yeah as long as she isn’t trying to impart the curse onto others or spread it excessively.”

“No problems there. True-killing?”

“Soul stuff.” Melody shrugged, “You shouldn’t have to worry about it but it just means nothing that prevents people from being delivered to their afterlife.”

Like consuming their soul? Well shit.

“That applies to… everyone?”

Melody sighed, “Technically, it’s good manners to give people a chance to surrender especially since you don’t gain anything extra from killing them. You even get their gear if they surrender, at least… you did in the past.”

“Not a multiverse rule though?”

“Not System enforced. The other rules like true-killing are System enforced. That one… you may get some angry gods who hunt you down which is… just as bad.”

Yikes…

Felix tried to seem curious more than worried, “What do you mean by System enforced? What happens?”

“System calculates and delivers an appropriate punishment. Exiled from the event, imprisonment, pain, loss of equipment, exiled to a remote planet for some time, loss of skills or levels is the worst one.”

Felix winced, “Okay, definitely not doing any of that.”

Melody smirked and took on a teasing tone, “You were planning on it?”

Felix shrugged nonchalantly, “Of course I was. Guess I’ll have to change my plans on how to conquer the event.”

Melody giggled, “Uh huh. As for vaults, most of the alliances will use crafters to build the vaults out of impressive materials because, you can bring them in just can’t take them out. There also isn’t any restriction on grade of material you can bring in. The System won’t let them bring some specific things but that list is much shorter than you’d hope so, the limit is just materials that they can fit through the portal and that someone can work with inside.”

“Ah, I see. So either many interlocking, warded plates that are no taller than the portal and are made of S grade materials or you have someone with forging skills that can handle S grade materials.”

“Yup, pretty much. Don’t worry too much about the enchantments because those require lots of mana and The System won’t even let B grade batteries in.”

Felix sighed, “Is there a list of what is and isn’t allowed in there?”

“Nope. Just gotta try and find out.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Sure sure. By the way, what was the gift that The Dragon’s Brood sent you?”

Felix didn’t see any reason to hide the gift and Melody already knew he was looking for them anyways, “Corpses.”

“Huh. That’s… really thoughtful and… apt.”

Felix shrugged, “Not exactly a secret I was looking to buy them in Telviras.”

“Yeah, guess not. You ready to go by the way?”

Felix almost tripped from a standstill, “Did we have an appointment I wasn’t aware of?”

“A date silly. You organized it? Did you accidentally break your brain with all that fiddling you do?”

Felix considered for exactly a tenth of a second that she was telling the truth and he had lost the memory when he reallocated the computer.

Finally nodding in understanding, “You mean new outfits.”

She shrugged, “Okay… maybe I organized it but… it’s basically a date.”

Felix sighed through an unimpressed smile, “Uh huh. Alright, let’s go.”

Stepping through the portal to Telviras, Felix was astonished to find it raining, something he had never witnessed during the epoch he had spent living in the city. He, on instinct, erected a simple Mana Barrier above his head to keep himself dry.

Melody pulled out an item that did something similar though it was much flashier.

Felix turned his head to her but didn’t need to speak any louder thanks to their high perception, “I didn’t even know it could rain here.”

She nodded, “If we weren’t so pressed for time, I’d have waited a bit. Rain on Telviras is scheduled.”

“Wait, really?”

She looked at him like it was the most normal thing in the multiverse and like he was the weird one, “Yeah.”

“Come to think of it, what about Eramith, the planet. Is rain scheduled there too?”

“No need for rain. The planet supplies the water directly to the plants and through the ground. There are places on the planet that rain if you want to experience it but around the core campus, we don’t want parchment or sensitive experiments getting ruined.”

“I see. You made an appointment?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a bit of time though.”

Felix sighed, “Okay perfect cause we need to go convince Rainoth that she can’t satisfy my clothing needs. Contract thing.”

Melody smirked, “That’s not going to be very difficult.”

Turning around back into the teleportation hub, the two of them took a portal to the outside of Raidran’s and Felix let them in through the employee entrance.

Cautiously walking into the main section of the store so as not to interrupt any clients that may have been there, Felix found the place empty.

Huh. Not sure why I didn’t expect that.

Standing in the middle of the room, Felix called out with his voice alone because anyone in the building should be able to hear him, “Hello! Anyone in here!?”

He quickly heard some shuffling off to his right and, appearing out of one of the hidden doors, was Kordran.

“Ah, Felix and Melody. Welcome.”

Felix nodded politely, “You know about my employment contract?”

Kordran nodded, “Of course. We are soul-partners and the contract affects me as well.”

“Right. I got invited to… Tekragoraxius’ Ascension day and I need an outfit.”

Kordran looked at Felix trying to determine if he was being serious. He looked at Melody who nodded and offered an expression of yeah-I-know-it-doesn’t-sound-possible-but-he’s-telling-the-truth along with a shrug.

Kordran slowly nodded, evidently not entirely convinced, “Okay then. Any chance I could… see the invite?”

Felix nodded, “Yes but don’t touch it. It removed her hand when she tried.” He gestured towards Melody with his head as he pulled the invitation from his Soul Space and held it out.

As soon as Kordran tried to read it, the invitation burst into blinding white flame that, once again, didn’t harm Felix in the slightest.

Felix stowed the invite and Kordran’s eyes went wide, “Holy Mother of Dragons. This… What does this mean…”

“I was hoping to get permission so I coul-”

Kordran nodded fervently, “Yes, of course. I, Kordran of Raidran’s, hereby declare that we cannot possibly satisfy your clothing requirements for such an event.”

Felix nodded, “Thanks.”

Kordran actually kneeled in prayer, “Of course.” Mumbling loud enough that they could all hear, “Despite what my soul-partner might try to claim.”

Felix chuckled then he and Melody left Kordran to pray.

As they walked into the employee entrance, Felix turned his head towards Melody, “Was a declaration that formal necessary?”

She shook her head, “Nope. Just makes it really obvious for everyone involved.”

“Soul-partner just a different name for husband and wife?”

She cocked her head, “Kind of but not really. It’s mostly a Drakene thing though not exclusively, they just do it the most. Marriage is just a contract you both sign. Soul-partnership is literally binding your souls together. It’s like a familiar bond but way more. You can feel and affect each-other’s emotions at all times, you can’t block them out and communicate. Also, you have authority over all contracts as they bind both of you no matter what.”

“Gotcha. Where to now?”

Melody smiled, “Caesuriax’s Willow”

Felix frowned then searched his map, finding the shop fairly close by.

“You found it?”

Felix nodded.

“Race you there.” Melody leapt and flew off before Felix could respond. He was much more inclined to just portal back to the hub then to the store but, he also had no intention of giving up on the race, despite her unsportsmanlike start.

Zipping through the portal spires, Felix desperately tried to activate his Reaper’s Perception but the situation wasn’t dire enough and he didn’t have enough practice. Even engaging his conviction through his aversion to losing, the skill simply wouldn’t consistently activate. Without it, his flying speed was limited by how fast he could perceive and react to his surroundings and at his top speed, Melody was quickly outpacing him.

Though it was dangerous and Felix had no hope of reacting to anything, he sped himself up until he beat her speed and erected a Mana Shield around himself.

He was able to dodge some things, mostly people moving in the same direction as him but his barrier still proved to be the right call as he knocked aside almost a dozen people and even a sky-slicer.

Thankfully, there aren’t problems with my going this fast.

He briefly thought about ascending to the blue layer above him but he still wasn’t nearly fast enough to match their speed and he didn’t have a license so he didn’t bother.

She effortlessly weaved through portals, dancing around people and deftly avoiding vehicles as she flew with more grace than Felix had ever seen, especially at her speed. Though he did finally manage to catch up with Melody, as he flew up just a dozen meters from her, he saw her wink then double her speed and quickly outpace him.

He sped up as much as he could but by that point, they were just one spire away from their destination so launching himself through, he was forced to slow down and loop back to land next to Melody at the entrance.

As with all buildings in Telviras, this was a large block made of sleek reflective panels arranged in a grid with the same dimensions as almost every other building in the city. The aspect of the building that immediately stood out to Felix though, was that there was only a single door as far as he could tell. It was located in the middle of the building on the ground level, right in front of them.

Walking up to it, Melody opened the door to reveal what appeared to be a park.

The floor, or ground, was made up of uneven hills covered in grass with a river that led into a pond over on the far right side. A flagstone path stretched out before them and trailed through the garden, winding around a number of trees that sheltered perfect lounging areas beneath them.

Right in the middle of the park, towering above all the other trees was, what appeared to be, a single willow tree.

Melody led Felix, along the path, towards the tree in the center of the park and finally, through the willow vines that perfectly obscured the area below.

Hidden within vines, Felix was half expecting to find a tailor’s shop and half expecting to find a grassy area, no different than the rest of the park. The latter turned out to be correct though it wasn’t entirely empty with a small bark man sitting upon one of the larger trunks.

Made entirely of wood, leaves and bark and standing no taller than Felix’s thigh was some kind of creature Felix had never seen before.

[SS] Caesuriax: Guardian of the Willow (Lvl ?)

Looking over at Melody for guidance on whether or not he should be bowing, he caught the tail end of her twirling around and falling to a sitting position, with her legs crossed, on the grass.

Felix sat next to her as Caesuriax turned to face them. Getting an up close look at their face, they looked old but, that could have been a side effect of their face being formed from bark. Their features were mostly human, formed from knots in their trunk with seemingly empty eye sockets.

“Thank you for making this appointment, your elegance. We will be attending Tekragoraxius’ Ascension day in a few dekads and are in need of traditional Drakene garb, to properly honor our hosts.” Melody spoke with more reverence and respect than Felix had ever heard from her before.

Caesuriax, looked towards her, then met Felix’s gaze and finally nodded once.

“Thank you. Blessings to the willow.” Melody bowed her head slightly then stood, Felix following close behind, as they left the area under the tree.

As soon as the vines drifted closed behind them, Melody sighed, “That went well.”

Felix shook his head, “Who was that… You were so… Polite?”

“Caesuriax. Keeper of The Time Garden and Guardian of the Willow.”

“I… What?”

Melody chuckled at Felix’s loss for words, “This is The Time Garden, sounds cooler than it is though. Everything here other than the Willow is normal, so don’t go picking the grass-” She smirked, “That’s what Ayred did the first time I brought him here.”

Felix furrowed his brow, “What’s special about the Willow?”

“The Willow is something like an Ancient creature. Think of it like a time capsule, sort of. It doesn’t store anything but it can… reach back in time and retrieve things… sort of, not really. It’s hard to explain but needless to say, it’s special.”

Felix nodded, “It would have to be to get a whole building in the middle of Telviras.”

“Yes and no. This isn’t in the building, the space is overlayed by the building. Think of it like stepping through a portal.”

“Oh, actually that somehow makes more sense… That meeting was faster than I expected.”

Melody shrugged, “Honestly, it was a toss up whether or not Caesuriax accepted.”

“Why wouldn’t they? Also… how much do they charge?”

“Nothing in credits and it depends if they deem the task worthy of the Willow.”

“I see. Is that everything we need to do here then?”

Melody nodded, “Believe so.”

As they walked out of the building, back onto the streets, Felix grabbed Melody’s arm and stopped her, “By the way, what ever happened to that sky-slicer I won?”

Melody’s eyes shot wide open, “Oh shit, I completely forgot about that, sorry.” With a twirl of the wrist, Melody produced a sleek black band that formed the majority of a loop.

Felix took the band from Melody and looked at it curiously, finally inspecting it to quell his confusion.

[S - Unique] Erevos

[Sky-Slicer]

A Sky-Slicer on the bleeding edge of enchantment advancements combined with unique artifacts and unreleased research.

Originally a slicer using professional slicer circuit technology that was later augmented with cutting edge research into replicating Kryptos’ enchantments. The augments allow the slicer to fold down into a conveniently wearable size.

This slicer is one of a kind, despite multiple attempts to replicate it. It has become apparent that, although those involved in its creation thought they understood Kryptos’ work, they were wrong. The use of previous creations, broken down and integrated into the slicer created something that seems to be impossible to replicate by anyone other than possibly Kryptos themselves.

“Huh.” Felix couldn’t help but smirk, “This is definitely more… special than I had anticipated. I see what you meant now.”

Melody shrugged, “So you aren’t mad about me pointing you in its direction?”

“I already told you I’m not mad. That level of manipulation is… I don’t care.”

Melody nodded, “Good. Well, I hope it serves you well.”

“So… why did Tanryel have it then? Is he really that important?”

Melody shook her head, “He had it for the first few dekads of the cycle so he could show it off to the new students.”

Felix frowned, “One of them might have bought it?”

Melody shrugged, “More like convince their parent to buy it for them. Anyways, wanna… take it for a test drive back to the hub?”

Felix grinned, “Oh yeah.”

Turning the band sideways Felix pushed his wrist through the gap then twisted it around where it immediately shrunk down to fit him perfectly, “Now I have Kryptos… things, on both wrists.”

“Kind of. This is one of the first successful attempts at replicating some of Kryptos’ enchantments. The research that made this possible is actually being led by a professor at Eramith, the first person to successfully break down and understand Kryptos’ enchantments enough to do anything useful. Not many people are aware of that though, he’s kind of a recluse.”

Felix’s eyes went wide, “Wait, really? They don’t teach any classes, do they?”

She shook her head, “Nah, just conduct their research somewhere on the planet. They used to take apprentices but… it’s been a long time since. I think that was before diving into Kryptos enchantments.”

Felix nodded then turned back to the unmarred black band now adorning his other wrist.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to activate it at first but a quick probe with mana gave him a much better idea. His initial probe was sucked into the band immediately and so Felix fed it more mana. He wasn’t sure exactly how much mana it would need but considering it was a vehicle, he was prepared to offer it a lot.

He started with pumping in a few million but if anything, the band pulled on his mana even faster so, he ramped it all the way up to exactly as much as he decided he was willing to part with, 100 million.

He cut the band off there so he had some mana left over just in case and made sure he had expended the mana in his charm first. Once he was done, he waited, hoping and praying to no one in particular that he wouldn’t need to give it more.

After a few moments of him watching the band-and Melody watching him-later, a series of white lines that gave off a slightly blue glow spread themselves out over the band. They formed some kind of pattern though not an arcane one as far as Felix knew. They seemed more decorative than anything.

Once the band was still again, he tapped it with his finger and was suddenly thrown up a couple meters into the air as a familiar, sleek black slicer sprung into existence around him. Without having to do anything on his part, Felix was already sitting in the driver’s seat of the vehicle.

“Okay… that was pretty cool.”

Melody hopped up from the ground into the seat next to Felix as he examined the inside of the slicer.

While the inside was somewhat familiar to Felix, like a car, that was mostly in the shape of the seats. Everything else was a series of white and blue lines and numbers on a sleek black panel. There was no steering wheel, pedals, stick shift or dials as far as he could see.

With-admittedly a lot of-help from Melody, Felix was able to identify most the controls and displays in the vehicle. While there were measurements he had never seen before and controls he had never imagined, the thing that took him the most by surprise was the meter indicating how full the batteries on the slicer were. He gawked at the meter that sat at just over a percent of a percent, even after he had poured a hundred million mana into it.

I better not have to hand over that much mana every time I want to summon it.

Rough math therefore put the total capacity of the batteries at somewhere around 600 Billion mana. Given it was a vehicle and much larger than a human, it wasn’t completely unfathomable but it was absurd in Felix’s mind.

Knowing the total capacity of the batteries, Felix’s biggest question became, how much mana would it consume per second?

After a few minutes of Melody poking and prodding Felix to get a move on, he finally placed his hands on the controls, which were located on either side of him where his hands naturally rested.

With about as much caution as Felix had ever used for anything in his life, he very carefully had Erevos lift itself a few meters higher off the ground and move very slowly forwards.

Finding the controls to be completely intuitive, he quickly ramped up the speed, though still not as quickly as Melody would have liked, and joined the red band on their level of flight.

Taking a quick peak at the mana capacity of the vehicle, he was actually slightly gaining mana at his current speed just due to the natural regeneration of the batteries. Before now, he had been too distracted by, well everything, to really pay attention but having seen that the batteries were gaining charge, he tuned into his mana senses and smirked.

His mana engines were cool and he was somewhat partial to them, even if he hadn’t used one in forever. They were also significantly out of date now but, he liked them.

These batteries though guzzled the ambient mana.

I can’t wait to dissect this thing and get everything I can out of it.

Paying careful attention to the mana reserves of the slicer, Felix sped up until he could match the average green flyway speed and merged up into them. He didn’t dare go any faster though as he was slowly losing mana at that point.

His basic mental math told him that they would make it so long as they used the portal spires efficiently so he wasn’t too worried. Melody though, was a little annoying the entire way teasing him about how slow he was going and refusing to listen to facts, logic or reality itself for that matter.

Flying up to the teleportation hub, Felix dismissed the slicer with a tap to the band on his wrist causing the both of them to soar into the building with their remaining momentum.

After stepping back through a portal to Eramith, Felix headed back to his dorm where he summoned and left the slicer in his dorm in a dormant state so it could charge itself. He had no idea if it would end up fully charged by the end of the dekad but if not, he was more than willing to siphon mana from his tower to fill the batteries.

The first dekad after evaluations, Felix wasn’t expecting much to change in the classes but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Firstly, the lectures themselves noticeably shifted from covering the basics with sprinkled mentions of the more advanced topics to an almost incomprehensible flow of information that touched on everything.

In his first lecture, Mana Structures, Professor Amelia had gone from talking about nodes, channels, basic patterns and their interactions to patterns that could replace nodes, node interactions and mana fluidity. Felix watched the lectures back in his Soul Garden from a crystal but no longer could he speed up the lectures and passively pay attention. His perceptual time dilation proved vital as he was forced to pause, rewind and take detailed notes as he tried to truly understand the content being presented.

Group Combat the day after that was also completely different as now, instead of being placed within the class, the goal had become learning over everything. Groups were made and mentors for the day assigned. Each Adept or Professor in rare cases, instructing, criticizing and directing their every action as they fought and worked together, as a group.

They were still able to move up and down in the classes but it no longer happened every class, instead happening only when the Adepts or Professor came to a consensus. At least in the case of Felix’s class, the 6th out of 10, no consensus was reached in the first dekad.

In Ked’s lab, things had also shifted from meandering and working on side projects to full dedication to projects that would span up to an epoch or sometimes longer. Felix still helped out where his abilities were requested but, that was rare in the first dekad as most of the Adepts were diving in the design phase.

Felix ended up therefore, spending most of his time working on his own project. While he still wasn’t certain what he wanted to do for the eye itself, there were other aspects that weren’t hindered by his indecision. He spent time jumping between research papers, reference manuals and old project designs as he worked through the materials, enchantments and abilities he was going to use.

Soul Manipulation also got a little odd as the practical nature of the class began to kick in and the majority of the class time was dedicated to allowing students to cultivate. Everyone was allowed to do as they pleased and they were occasionally interrupted when a student asked a particularly pertinent question that Professor Fen thought warranted a mini lecture.

Felix spent his time mostly ignoring Melody, who much to the annoyance of Fen and the students in the class, was constantly trying to chit chat. Finally he decided it was best for everyone, and drew less attention to himself, if he stuck her in his Soul Garden. He later realized that was likely her goal the entire time but either way, he preferred it this way.

He spent the time experimenting with pseudo constructs within his own mind. While he could theoretically grow his soul or harden it or work towards another conviction, he was convinced his most promising course of action was to give his soul structure. Instead of experimenting with his very essence though, Felix played it safe and began creating mental constructs that had structured souls.

The souls he created though were nothing like Grim’s, in fact he pointedly tried to avoid creating those as he knew how much of a pain point Grim’s soul was for him. Instead, he created souls with functions.

His soul had a layer suffusing his body. That layer served a function. Mark had a layer that protected him and controlled access to the memories and experiences he stored.

Felix started with layers that had unique intentions then moved on to defensive and offensive layers. Eventually he even delved into non spherical layers, rings and moons that orbited the main soul. Nothing was promising enough for him to get too excited but he was learning plenty which, was kind of the point of class and the school itself, in his mind at least.

It was clear to Felix that many of the other students, and even professors, didn’t seem to agree though. In the first half of the dekad, the second big shift he noticed was attendance and focus.

The first integration event had been announced and many students deemed preparing for it a more appropriate use of their time than classes. Felix couldn’t judge them too much though as he was skipping four of his eight classes every dekad already.

The issue was that on top of that, their focuses were blatantly on recruitment and alliances. Normally Felix ignored the other students and what they did but they became even more annoying than they had after winning his miracle duel against Tanryel.

Now, instead of being approached, pestered with questions and challenged to duels, Felix was approached by sycophants and offered gifts and alliances constantly. It was a toss up every time a student approached whether or not they were trying to weasel their way into Kjarne and the Archon’s alliance through Felix and indirectly, Melody or if they wanted to recruit him.

Despite his fears, it seemed Felix was still considered an unknown quantity. From what he gathered while ducking, dodging, avoiding and running from students, Felix hung out more than anyone with Melody, who was very well known. He had also won a duel against Tanryel, ruining his undefeated-by-anyone-in-the-same-grade-or-below status in Caster’s Dueling. On top of that, he was exempt from four classes and being personally trained by Fin and working in Ked’s lab.

There were rumors about his mana pool but nothing concrete, despite having shown it off in the duel there was still a lot of disbelief and ridiculous explanations floating about.

On the other hand, Felix was impressively bad in combat classes despite focusing on it. There were rumors he was somewhat stuck in his leveling and some suspected he had hit the evolution in either his class or profession but simply didn’t like the options presented. He also used simple spells that were so far outclassed, some thought it was joke and others, a restriction of the skills that granted his other abilities.

It also seemed as though either no one was aware of his involvement with the Reaper or they simply didn’t mention it, despite the fact that he wasn’t really trying to hide it at all.

He was still an Integrated though and that was a well known fact so many thought they could train him to iron out the kinks and teach him the ways of the world. He was so inundated with offers promising basic trainers though that his normal distaste for other people had ripened and become almost sickening.

At one point during his time in Ked’s lab after the break though, as Felix was approached by an Adept attempting to recruit him to some unknown neutral god’s alliance, Felix realized something. The Adept didn’t annoy or disgust him much at all.

His distaste for others wasn’t because he was a misanthrope, it was because the vast majority of them were dumb. The Adept that approached him in Ked’s lab approached Felix respectfully, had a thoughtful gift and was extremely well researched into what Felix wanted, needed and liked.

Felix turned them down and they respectfully backed off but the gift was incredibly useful for Felix. It was a manual containing a collection of research into creating enchantments that could effectively see. Felix hadn’t told many what he was doing or looking for but their research was impressive enough that Felix made a point of remembering the god they were working for, Amatara.

The book ended up giving Felix direction, at least temporarily, for the missing part of his design. He planned on using the contents of the manual as a temporary solution until he figured out something better. It was both the best he had at the moment and the first thing he had that was at minimum satisfactory to his standards.

Peace’s training was entirely uneventful though, Felix did appreciate being around someone who didn’t mention recruitment or the event at all. They focused entirely on training, not that that helped his currently abilities much. He didn’t make any noticeable progress and his skills didn’t increase in proficiency at all which was rather disappointing.

In Solo Combat, Felix was placed to spar against a series of Adepts who dissected every decision he made and action he took before moving on to another student. It was a torrent of information that he couldn’t possibly all apply at once even though much of it was repeat information. Even still, there were a number of improvements he could be making.

Lastly, and somewhat thankfully for Felix, Mana Control didn’t change in the slightest. Some of the Adepts questioned Felix about his plans for the Integration Event but he found their comments more insightful than annoying. They didn’t have ulterior motives as far as he could tell and simply wanted to offer information and their own experiences because they wouldn’t be attending. From what he could tell, they enjoyed their experience and knowledge being useful, participating in some indirect way or proving their unique knowledge and passing on secrets.

None of what he learned was mind blowing or anything but his strategy and the logic behind his priorities was tested and solidified which was more than he was expecting.

Obviously, while all of this was happening, Felix was simultaneously destroying each and every one of them across the entire class as they tried desperately to fight his mana control.

The next dekad passed similarly to the first though Felix and Peace did manage to move up to the fifth class almost solely because of how badly they were destroying their fellow classmates. Felix also managed to increase his proficiency with all his Reaper skills by a single tier each. Most students seem to have finished with recruitments at that point and had shifted their attention elsewhere.

Peace and Melody had pointed out at least 4 students each that had been spying on them and trying to listen to their plans for the event. Felix himself, once he was aware of them, had caught two by himself, though their abilities in stealth were obviously lacking. He was certain he had missed a number of them but it didn’t matter either way because he wasn’t discussing his plans with anyone but Grim.

All his preparation either occurred within his Soul Garden, in the Rings, in his Soul Space or occasionally in his Pocket Home.

As the night before the event opened passed, Felix spent some time topping up the batteries on Erevos in his Pocket Home though, even that left him with an absurd amount of excess. He ended up retrofitting an overflow mechanism onto his mana engine, after massively increasing its power with his increased mana control. He didn’t redesign the engine with any new knowledge or insights, he just increased its strength and density.

As for the overflow, the excess mana was dumped into the multicolored sea around the island that had previously grown slightly dull over time.

The tree, once sapling, he had planted had just barely grown past its infancy. Instead of a stem it now clearly consisted of some variety of wood and the few leaves and branches it had sprouted sported a dizzying rainbow of colors.

Looking at it, Felix still wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the tree, exacerbated by the fact that he had no idea what the tree was or did. He figured he would figure it out in time but so far all it had done was produce a snowfall of tiny crystals forming a fine white sand base under what could barely be considered a canopy.

There was nothing else for Felix to do in his Pocket Home, now that he had already confirmed how he was going to create his vault in the event so Felix headed back to his dorm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .