What… just happened? Why was there an exit? I definitely didn’t complete that realm and… it wasn’t the final boss?.
Felix was wary of his surroundings but if the realm pattern continued beyond the Dragon, then the realm he was in was a medical themed realm. On top of that, he had never been under direct threat the moment he entered a realm and looking around, the realm looked even more barren than the last.
Where the Dragon’s Realm had been evidently ravaged recently, the 2001st realm looked to have been abandoned long ago. It was barren and everything that had ever lived there, had long since died and been forgotten. The ground was hard and unforgiving, the sky grey with a permanent fog and the wind carried dust from every direction, leaving an even coat over the entire landscape.
If it was a medically themed realm, there should have been sapients, or at least sentients.
Now that Felix was thinking about it, he realized all the realms had had sapients in them up until the Dragon and even that realm, he didn’t really know if the Dragon was sapient or sentient.
Before he explored though, he decided he was relatively safe so he pulled Nova out of his Soul Space and looked her over. Despite essentially experiencing her death, she seemed fine and meowed at Felix before looking around at the barren landscape around them.
You okay?
She meowed at him again then slipped free of his grasp and began wandering around, the only thing he felt from their bond was mild annoyance that he hadn’t let her fight the Dragon herself.
Grim on the other hand, was less nonchalant about dying, If Arysha hadn’t convinced you to have Nova puppet a body from your Soul like the rest of us, she would have died.
That was you, wasn’t it? You had Arysha convince me because you didn’t want to talk to me yourself.
Grim didn’t answer but Felix already knew the answer.
If you knew I was going to lose, why didn’t you stop me?
I didn’t know. Even if I did, could I have possibly convinced you?
Probably.
Grim seethed a little, Did you even think there was a chance you could lose?
Of course I did.
Then why didn’t you come up with backups and fail-safes to keep everyone alive. You could have moved them out of your Soul, backed everything up and left them in the last Realm or in your Pocket Home with Edira.
If I had done that, they’d be in a really shitty spot without me.
They would be alive.
They’re alive right now. Felix countered.
His emotional state finally boiling over, Grim began yelling in Felix’s Mind, They’re alive because you are and you’re only alive through dumb luck.
So?
You have MILLIONS of Souls living their lives in your mind. You can’t just throw yourself into stupid situations with no regard for you life when you have others that need you.
I don’t understand. I’ve been doing stupid life risking shit since we first met. Why are you suddenly not okay with it now?
I’ve never been okay with you taking ridiculous risks with your life but at least then, it was just your life.
That’s not true. I risked Peace’s life messing with his Soul, which was arrogant and stupid but worked out. I risked your life when I fought Erolan. I risked everyone in my mind every time I fought something I shouldn’t have for the last two epochs. What changed?
I CHANGED.
Felix sat in silence for some time before Grim continued.
I care about them. Nova, Arysha, Orion, all the Residents. Even Mark. I know you don’t but you can’t just risk everything. You can’t just treat their lives like they mean nothing.
I don’t actually know if I don’t. Felix sighed, I don’t know.
I know. I’m in your brain. None of us are sure if you care about anyone.
So what? You want me to move everyone out of my brain then? My Soul is kind of necessary for all this to work. I don’t even think it would be possible to move the Mental World Anima Planet outside of me.
I know. Grim sighed, Me neither.
So what, you want me to sit in a bunker for the rest of my life so everyone in there is safe?
I DON’T KNOW. You didn’t even try though. You didn’t even think about protecting them once. Then with that thing you made and stuck in your Soul… In most cases you’d be fine, maybe even against The Dragon, your Soul would live on as a remnant. With that thing you knew it could have destroyed everything and that just made you want it more.
Yeah but, I can’t change that about me. They exist because I am who I am. I am who I am because of whatever I happened to me in the past and almost none of it from what’s happened to me since. Judging from my Soul, I’ll probably never really change or grow. So what do you want me to do?
Just… figure out what the fuck is going on here and I… I need some time.
Fine. Felix located Nova through their bond so he could travel in a different direction, to cover more ground.
They ended up searching the Realm for almost a dekad, though Felix and a number of small flying robotic constructs were doing all of the searching. Nova had gotten bored of the completely empty and barren Realm after just a few hours. Felix was leaving Grim alone and his Residents, while not as upset as Grim, were still more subdued in general after the fight with the Dragon.
Losing so completely when they had thought they had a chance had soured everyone’s mood. Roaming a boring grey wasteland didn’t help in the slightest.
The next realm though, was even worse. Instead of a barren landscape, it was covered in small grass, ferns and trees. The grass was thin though, the ferns yellowish and the trees small. Like it was difficult for anything to even try to grow there. It was depressing in a completely different way.
The only one that seemed unaffected by the atmosphere of the realms and recent events was Felix, which seemed to almost make it worse for some of the others.
He traveled through 17 completely empty realms save for some vegetation here and there that was barely holding on.
Felix’s working theory was that the Dragon had actually come from a higher Realm and worked its way downwards but even he wasn’t convinced by his own theory. The Dragon’s realm, the 2000th, was completely melted into slag but all the realms he had traveled through after that had shown no signs of the Dragon’s breath at all.
The issue was, he didn’t have a better theory.
On the 2018th realm, Felix appeared from through the iridescent bubble in a realm that looked very similar to the realms he had traveled through before. It was lifeless and empty but there were pillars of stone covering the ground forming something akin to a forest so, it wasn’t exactly the same. Still, it was just as boring as the last ones, at least according to Nova who remained asleep in Felix’s robes which he had long since swapped back to for comfort.
Lazily, Felix drifted through the pillars of stone, allowing the Residents observing his vision to let him know if he passed by the iridescent bubble.
As he did, he casually created and destroyed Spell forms all around him which was useful but his heart wasn’t really in it. It was more something to do to pass the time. Once Nova woke up from her nap, he’d coax her into playing their new favorite game again, Matter Control Tug of War.
The Soul Vault remained as impenetrable and frustrating as ever and even the Fractal Mana Spell Form remained beyond his grasp, even with his two new convictions.
All in all, it made Felix feel a bit hollow about his progress. Not that he didn’t appreciate it all but more so he felt like he was missing something fundamental and no matter how much he thought about it, nothing came to mind. So, he didn’t think about it much.
His eyes were almost entirely glazed over as he felt like a leaf drifting on the wind, or a plastic bag floating in the ocean.
Due to his lack of attention, even though his Perception was high enough to see them, Felix didn’t notice anything himself.
Mr Felix sir…
Felix blinked a few times as his consciousness fully returned, Huh?
There’s something… there.
Felix could feel where the Resident was indicating and he looked over in that direction but saw nothing. He immediately knew what the Resident was talking about though, there was a difference in the Ambient Anima. Felix didn’t have much practice with spotting minute difference in the Ambient Anima but having a computer for a brain helped tremendously in identifying patterns and recognizing when something was off.
Once he knew in his mind that there was something wrong, Felix’s Soul began to perk up and slowly, he began to see.
Flashes of movement, barely audible noises and even a slight increase in the temperature gradient in a specific direction, which he could only feel through his Matter Control, were more than enough to grow his excitement.
Rocketing forwards, Felix obliterated a few pillars like he was a wrecking ball and scattered dust and shrapnel in every direction. Whatever was hiding from him wasn’t immediately revealed, whatever it was was far too skilled to be caught by a simple trick like that. What it did do, was make it harder for it to focus on everything and Felix’s hope was that it would cause it to slip up.
Sure enough, he felt a brief flash of the Ambient Anima going rigid and unmoving. Like someone was using their Aura to simulate the Ambient Anima and for a moment, they slipped up on keeping their Aura in sync with their surroundings.
With his Matter Control, Felix forced all the dust and shrapnel aside then stared at the seemingly empty point in space.
He stared, certain he was right about there being something there, despite their renewed dedication to keeping their Aura hidden. When they were stopped and focused on it, Felix had to admit they were almost perfect at hiding their presence.
Finally, after nearly 10 minutes of just staring, Felix heard a sigh as a man suddenly appeared in the exact spot Felix had been staring. He had medium length black hair that was drawn back, a short graying beard and a permanent looking scowl judging from how comfortably it sat on his face.
“I was here first.” The man spoke with a gruff and grumbly voice that quite suited his scowl.
Felix shook his head in surprise, “Uhm… okay?”
The man stared for a moment, his lips pursed, “What do you want.”
“Uh… directions… I guess?”
The man’s scowl deepened, “You want what?”
“Directions.” Felix restated as he had nothing better to ask for.
“Directions to what there’s nothing here.”
Felix looked around, “You’re here… there must be something here?”
The man grumbled in annoyance, “If you’re here, you know as well as I do why I’m here.”
“I do?”
“Are you always this much of a pain?”
“Are you always this much of a grump?”
He groaned, “You gonna let me go or we gonna fight?”
Felix quickly did the mental math to determine the realm wasn’t supposed to be a combat realm, “Wait, what? I don’t want to fight you.”
“The hell do you want? I got shit to do.”
“I take it directions is a bad answer?”
The man sighed, “The hell do you mean directions? This zone’s been good and dead for millions of epochs. Since you’re here, yo-”
“Zone? What is a zone?”
“The fuck do you call it? This giant fucking bubble we’re in now.”
“Wait, stop. You mean realm? You know about the realms?”
The man’s brow furrowed, “What do you mean? Of course I know…” His eyes widened but his scowl somehow remained, “You’re a challenger…”
“A what?” Felix cocked his head, “I’m not a native, no.”
“Wait… How’d you make it through the Dragon?”
“I didn’t.” Felix sighed, “Brought an entire army with me and in the end, they were all wiped out and I barely made it to the exit.”
He stared at Felix for a few seconds, evaluating something about him, “Lucky kid.”
Felix nodded, “I’ve been told. Anyways, are you the only one here, in this zone?”
“Yeah. This one. Only come this far every hundredth scout.”
“Scout? What are you scouting for?” Felix looked around, “Didn’t you say these Realms have been dead for millions of epochs?”
He nodded, “You really a challenger?”
Felix nodded, “Not sure how to prove it. You natives don’t seem to be aware of The System so it’s not like I can show you all my titles and whatnot.”
“The what? Your titles? What are you, a noble or something?”
“Never mind.”
[?] Varex (Lvl 4721)
The man sniffed a little, “Come on. I’ll bring you back to my party. Aela can decide if your lying.”
“What are you looking for in these zones? Is there a chance they aren’t all dead and barren? Are you expecting something to just… spontaneously appear?”
Varex cocked his head over his shoulder, “I’m done scoutin anyways. I’ll show you on the way back.”
Felix nodded then began following Varex as he turned and began running through the pillars of stone.
He moved fast enough that Felix had to use Force Spells to keep up, not just his Matter Control, but he wasn’t so fast Felix couldn’t keep up. Varex kept looking back though and every time he saw Felix just a few meters behind him, he sped up.
Eventually Felix had to either bulldoze through the pillars or fly over them and he opted for the latter.
Varex didn’t veer in any particular direction over the course of a few hours. He seemed to have the location of the exit and the path to get there memorized. When they arrived, Varex didn’t even look back at Felix and just ran right into the bubble. Felix dropped down a moment later and slapped it, reappearing in the next realm that seemed just as barren as the last one.
Felix had maintained some momentum when moving but it was still disorienting and he didn’t know if he would end up in a building or something on the other side so he was always careful traveling between realms. Varex hadn’t stopped at all and had just maintained pace, running along the desert sand just as he had the stone pillar forest floor.
Flying into the air and catching up, Felix continued following him for hours as they traversed from realm to realm.
On the 2023rd realm, Varex finally stopped and fell to his knees, sitting on his heels with perfect posture.
Felix lowered himself down in front of Varex and looked at him curiously.
“You were asking what we’re looking for.” He pointed at the ground in front of him, “That.”
Then, Varex closed his eyes and entered a meditation.
Felix stepped forwards and inspected the ground where Varex had pointed and his eyes widened as he felt a tight concentration of Anima a few meters below the ground. It was more dense than the average Core Soul and by Felix’s estimation the amount of Anima was equivalent to about a hundred Souls at the average level of the realm natives he had seen most recently.
As Varex sat there, he drew in the Anima as a stream into his Soul. Slowly incorporating it into himself in some process that was invisible to Felix.
He didn’t touch the Anima himself as he didn’t want Varex to ditch him so, he simply waited for the couple of hours it took him to harvest the Anima. Once he was done, there was nothing left and Varex rose to his feet, “That’s the only one we’ll hit on our way back.”
Felix nodded, unsure why Varex was telling him that then continued following him.
It was only on the 2087th realm that any amount of healthy life began to appear but even then, it was just a couple of mice looking creatures that The System estimated were around level 2000. After that, the vegetation began to gradually look healthier and healthier until finally, they arrived in the 2142nd realm.
The realm looked just like the other realms in that it was empty of life save for some grass and, a single stone house in the distance with a pillar of smoke rising from the chimney.
Varex ran over to it and waited for Felix to land behind him before opening the door and stepping inside.
“You’re back.” A soft feminine voice called out.
He nodded in her direction then continued stepping in, looking over in the other direction before addressing the group, “I found a stray.”
“A stray? In the one’s?” Another feminine voice asked in confusion.
“0’s.” Varex corrected.
“You brought them back with you?” A masculine voice asked.
“Claims he’s a challenger.”
Everyone went silent at that and Varex turned and gestured Felix inside.
Felix nodded and walked in, fully aware he probably should have been more cautious but just happy that he was no longer wandering dead realms.
Inside the small cottage, there were three others in total. To the right, the woman who had spoken with a soft voice and announced Varex’s welcome was a small, young woman with two short and rounded horns on her forehead, dark tanned skin and long messy brown hair.
[?] Amerela (Lvl 4901)
On the other side of the door, to Felix and Varex’s left, was a man and a woman. The man was about average height, with messy brown curls, stubble, a number of scars and he was slightly overweight.
[?] Kether (Lvl 4838)
Finally the woman, was striking in every way. She had white hair, dark skin, light green eyes and wore a massive robe or dress that somehow spewed fabric in every direction, despite barely covering any of her body up at all.
[?] Aela (Lvl 5317)
As soon as he stepped into the room, all three of them stared at him but Aela was the only one who approached. She immediately drifted over and brushed her fingers against his cheek, “Does he now…”
Felix recoiled causing Kether to chuckle, “So what do you think, Aela?”
She cocked her head and looked at Felix curiously, “I don’t… know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Kether leaned forwards, half out of his seat, “You touched him.”
She shrugged, “He’s hard to read.”
Kether frowned, “His Aura’s not that strong.”
“Are you suppressing it?” Varex frowned.
“I’m not suppressing it. Just not… projecting it?” Felix answered.
Varex’s ever present scowl deepened, “This is your natural state though?”
Felix nodded.
“Project it for us. Don’t hold back.” Kether rose to his feet and walked over to stand a few meters in front of him, crossing his arms and waiting.
Felix looked around and everyone else was in agreement so Felix projected his Aura outwards. It was much stronger than it had been with his new convictions. Now, it was denser, more aligned and further reaching than it ever had been. It was strong enough that Felix was confident in his ability to knock out most normal people with his Aura alone.
That confidence led him to not project his Aura out with full strength right away. Looking around, no one in the room seemed the slightest bit bothered though, in fact, they all seemed rather disappointed.
Noticing that, Felix pushed harder and harder until he was projecting his Aura with as much force as he could, all focused within the cottage.
No one in the room seemed the slightest bit bothered and all of them were protecting themselves with their own auras in some way or another.
Felix released his Aura and Kether nodded with a mildly impressed expression, “Not bad for an outsider.”
“His control is much better than the other challengers.” Aela nodded.
Varex’s brow furrowed further, “Not strong enough to block Aela though.”
Kether nodded in agreement, “Weird that his Aura’s natural state is so…”
“Shy.” Aela finished with a mischievous grin.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“You said challengers. There are others?” Felix looked around at the rest of the room.
“Sure.” Aela nodded, “The last challenger was…”
“Godovan.” Amerela added, the first thing she’d said since announcing Varex’s return.
“No.” Aela shook her head in disbelief, “He arrived… what? 8 million epochs ago?”
Kether nodded, “Sounds about right.”
“Was he really the last one?” Aela’s eyes rolled back as she thought.
Varex nodded, “Rel’s right. Ever since that thing found its way into the 2000th.”
“That was really that long ago?” She looked around at her friends.
They all nodded.
“Any idea how many epochs that would be on the outside?” Felix looked around.
Kether shook his head, “Don’t even try to think about it. The time in here is so completely separate from time outside. The only thing that stays consistent, is that you challengers always leave shortly after you came in. Sometimes, we’ve had challengers arrive in here before people who entered before them.”
“Never by that much though. Just a few epochs.” Aela waved him off.
Varex nodded, “He’s right. Don’t think about it.”
“So…” Felix looked around again, “No more zone quests? You guys just hang out here and harvest realms? Is there anything beyond this?”
The natives all looked at each-other and began laughing. Aela giggled, Varex chuckled once, Amerela giggled quietly and Kether boomed, “You think we just sit here in this cottage and harvest Spirit Anomalies all day?”
Felix shrugged, “How would I know.”
“There’s no zone where I could last off Aela’s cooking for more than a dekad.”
She glared at him in response but the others laughed harder at that.
“So… If you don’t live here?”
Aela glided over and brushed his neck with the backs of her fingers, “We all live in Azura. The Ephemeral City.”
Felix stepped away from her one step, “Where’s that?”
Amarela stared at her hands as if she were embarrassed to offer, “If… you’d like, we could bring you back with us.”
Felix looked at the rest of them, “That would be great actually.”
They all nodded that they were okay with that and Varex added, “We have to harvest first. It’ll take five dekads or so.”
“You… want me to stay here?” Felix offered to be polite.
Aela smirked, “You can come with us, but only because you’re so…” She stepped forwards and whispered past his ear, “Interesting…”
Kether rolled his eyes and turned to Varex, “How much this time?”
“20 pheros, give or take.”
Kether whistled, “Not a bad haul.”
“That’s more than we can store.” Amerela added hopefully.
Aela shrugged, “Barely. And he could have taken some of my share.”
“I’m happy to just follow you all around. Also… what’s a pheros?”
“You know that thing I stopped at on the way?” Varex crossed his arms and the others in the room looked at him curiously.
“Yeah.” Felix nodded, “Chunk of Anima.”
“What you call Anima, we call ros. That was about 100 sinros.”
The others in the room relaxed upon hearing that apparently paltry sum.
“A sinros is how many pheros?”
“One pheros is 100,000 sinros. One sinros is 100,000 muros. One muros is 100,000 ros.”
“So ros is the unit of measurement?”
“Yup.” Kether nodded, “It’s a stupid system but it’s the best we’ve got.”
Aela twirled around towards the door, brushing her nearly naked body against Felix as she did so, “Shall we?”
Kether nodded and walked to the door but was too big to walk by Felix so he backed out to give them room.
The other two joined them a moment later and they headed out back into the lesser realms.
This time, they didn’t travel straight from bubble to bubble though to get through the Realms as fast as possible but Varex still knew exactly where they were going so they moved in a straight line from anomaly to anomaly. The first Spirit Anomaly Varex had mapped out was bigger than the one he had stopped at with Felix initially by many orders of magnitude. At the anomaly, they sat around it and absorbed as much of the Anima as they could which, was the entire first anomaly.
Felix stood behind them and watched as they did, noticing that each one of them drew in the Anima slightly differently.
There was nothing too surprising though. Varex drew in a single strand, Aela thousands of tiny strands, Kether one giant slow moving strand. Amerela drew out a strand and split that it into many strands, only one of which was drawn into her while all the others, she put back.
Once they were done, all of them at about the same time and, despite their varying techniques, they all seemed to have gotten about the same amount.
Heading out, Kether and Varex ran while Amerela flew off to the right and Felix to the left. Aela joined Felix and walked on the air, easily keeping up with their speed despite how slowly her legs were moving.
“So. Challenger. Tell me about you.”
Felix turned his head towards her, “What do you want to know?”
“Well, how about you start with your name?”
Felix snorted, I forgot, no System. I’d gotten so used to not having to introduce myself., “I’m Felix.”
She nodded, “I’m Aela.”
“I know all your names. I guess you don’t know about The System either?”
She cocked her head, “I’ve heard about something like that, from other challengers. Something about Skills?”
Felix nodded, “Among other things. One of those Skills lets me identify people around me. Assess their strength. See their name.”
“Seems a little invasive.” She frowned playfully.
“Yeah.” Felix shrugged, “If it makes you feel any better, it’s not very good at gauging the strength of someone with a strong Soul.”
She nodded, “Would you say we have strong Souls?”
Felix nodded quickly, “My Aura alone would knock out most people on the outside.”
She frowned in genuine disgust, “Really?”
He nodded, “Pretty sure.”
“Do you use it to fight?”
“Not much. I’m still pretty new to the whole Aura thing.”
She nodded, “That makes more sense to me. So then, do you cast spells or do you just wear those robes to look pretty?”
“Why can’t it be a bit of both?” He smirked, “I usually fight with spells.”
She snickered, “You should talk to Rel. She’s our resident expert at making things go boom. Plus-” Aela leaned in, completely uncaring of the speeds they were moving at, “-I think she likes you.”
Felix nodded, “I’d love to see what kind of Spells she casts and how.”
“What about on the outside? Anyone out there worrying about you?”
He shrugged, “I arrived with two other people, both of which went into the Realm. I doubt either of them are worried about me.”
“Do they care about you?”
“I think so.” Felix nodded.
“Considering you got past the Dragon and given how… your Aura, I take it you are not particularly cautious?”
He shrugged, “Depends. I take quite a number of stupid risks though. Yeah.”
She nodded with confidence, “They’re worried about you.”
“I… if you say so.”
She smiled and waved then walked across the air and down towards Kether and Varex. Felix on the other hand, flew over towards Amerela who seemed to be completely in her own world.
“Hi. Aela w-”
“EEEEP!” Kaboom!
Felix was suddenly sent flying hundreds of meters away and buried in the soft dirt ground. He lost a sizable chunk of his health but nothing too dangerous.
Pulling himself out of the hole, he found Kether laughing his ass of and Varex offering him a hand.
Felix took it and let him help him out of the hole then caught sight of Amerala rushing towards him, “I am so sorry. I just… You surprised me. Are you okay?”
Felix nodded, “I’m good. I’ll be fine.”
Kether nodded and turned away, Varex a moment later and Aela shook her head from a distance, like she had expected that to happen.
Getting himself back up into the air, Felix flew back towards the others and Amerela remained by his side, making sure he was okay and apologizing quite a few times.
Interrupting one of her unnecessary apologies, “So I hear you cast spells?”
She was caught off guard for a moment but nodded, “I… yeah. Kind of like… the one I hit you with. Not that that was on purpose. Not that I can’t control it I just… you surprised me.”
Felix nodded, “Don’t worry about it. I was hoping you could show me some spells? If you’re willing?”
Her eyes widened and she nodded, “Sure. I can show you all my spells but… I’m an incaster so…”
“Incaster? What does that mean?”
“I was born with talent. I… you probably won’t be able to cast the spells I cast, the way I cast them.”
Felix shrugged, “I’m just hoping to learn something.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
“Maybe let’s start with something less… violent?”
She winced, “Well… My talent is…”
Over the course of the first three dekads they traveled, Felix ended up spending nearly every free moment with Amerela, who preferred Rel. She was an incaster, short for intrinsic or inherent, which Felix learned was just another word for what he would consider sorcerer. She cast Spells through her talent and will power alone. It was what Felix had started to do, but taken to the extreme.
She cast without any Spell forms at all. There was no outer ring, no nodes, no channels, no patterns, nothing. She harnessed raw Mana and simply shaped it into Spells.
Felix tried to replicate what she was doing but when he did it, it was nothing like her Spells.
She could simply will a ball of Fire to fly out and explode. Felix doing the same thing, felt about equivalent to a juiced up Fire Bolt.
Her talent, the one that allowed her to cast the way she did, came with a limitation though. She wasn’t limited to just specific Spells but any Spell that didn’t involve Fire or Force, was so weak they were essentially useless. As she explained it, inborn abilities varied in more than just Attunement too.
She claimed she was lucky because her talent focused in such a way that allowed her to branch it over to Lightning almost perfectly though, Felix didn’t understand that at all. Fire and Force were so far from Lightning in Attunement and in the physics that he just couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Rel’s complete lack of understanding about what she was doing didn’t help at all either. She just did things by feel so she couldn’t really explain them. It was completely natural for her.
He also asked about her method of cultivation and she told him that she specifically filtered out the Anima that was far from her talent so she didn’t dilute it. Aela did something similar in splitting the incoming Anima but she sorted it within her Soul and kept it organized.
Felix more or less gave up on casting Spells the way Rel did after a dekad but he kept flying alongside her and having her cast Spells for him to observe because there was more than just how she manipulated the Mana. He showed her his own methods of casting, with Spell Forms and she was interested, but less in the Spells and more in him it seemed like.
Despite the differences, Felix was still fascinated by her Spells because each one was an extension of herself, in a way.
They had Concepts imbued within them but the Concept of Fire she used in her Fire Spells was significantly weaker and less pure than Tam’s grasp of the same Concept, and yet, Rel’s Spell was stronger. Along with the Concept- or rather as a part of the Concept- or more accurately, the Concept was a part of the Anima she imbued into the Spell.
That Anima she imbued, felt like a part of herself, including everything which happened to include some Concepts.
As for why that was stronger, Felix had no explanation. He understood Concepts helped channel the energy appropriately, balance and shape it. It made sense to him that there was an experience of high heat and that made a Fire Spell hotter.
She was imbuing everything though. All the experiences that made her who she was. There was a grasp of the Concept of Fire in there somewhere, which Felix wasn’t sure if she was born with or developed due to her affinity for Fire. There was also her generally meek nature, her experiences as a child, growing up.
It took him till the end of the third dekad to finally realize what she was doing seemed terribly inefficient. Out of everything she shoved into the Anima in the Spell, he was pretty sure 99% of it was dormant while only the relevant parts of her experiences were active.
On the other hand, he tried casting Spells in the same way without those other experiences, he even tried stripping them out of her Spell but for whatever reason, they were necessary. All of them.
It was at the beginning of the fourth dekad when Aela, Varex, Kether and Rel had drawn in as much Anima as they could for the time being. Any more and they’d risk losing themselves. After the harvest, they would take time off and let the Anima acclimate to their bodies and then, they’d go on another harvest. In that time, new anomalies would appear, for some reason. That complete lack of information as to why the anomalies existed haunted Felix but he had no way of figuring it out.
The Anima within the anomalies felt just like the Ambient Anima in the realms, just denser.
He hadn’t really gotten any chance to examine the Anima in an anomaly himself as they had been harvesting up until then. The rest, they planned on bottling up somehow, which was something Felix was told he’d have to just wait and see about.
“Rest of us are filled up. This one’s yours.” Varex gestured towards it with his head.
“You ever done something like this before?” Kether looked at him seriously, his arms crossed.
“Something like it.” Felix nodded.
Aela nodded, uncharacteristically serious, “Be careful. Don’t take too much or you could lose yourself.”
“We’ll bottle whatever’s left and refine it just outside Azura.” Varex nodded.
“Don’t be greedy.” Kether said, “I’ve seen too many people take on more than they should. Their Soul falls apart within their body leaving behind a husk. A corpse that just doesn’t die. It’s not pretty.”
Felix nodded, “I’ll be fine.” He looked mostly at Amerela as despite her complete lack of voice, she seemed the most worried out of all of them for Felix.
Stepping towards the cluster, Felix stepped right on top of it, on a hard earthen ground. Then, he fell right down towards it as he used his Matter Control to dig a hole beneath his feet.
The cluster was just a few dozen meters below the surface and once he reached it, Felix used his tendrils to grab hold of the Anima and tear it apart. Each piece, he pulled into his Soul where it went to various layers. Now that he had two more convictions forming a full trifecta, there was more compressing of his Soul he could do. He found it was less than he’d hoped, much less than his time fighting curses in Amatara’s recruitment but, it was still something.
Then, just a few moments after dropping down into the hole, Felix flew back up, and closed the hole behind him leaving little trace he had been there at all.
“Did you…” Kether stepped forwards, staring at Felix, “Just take the whole thing?”
“I thought… you were going to bottle whatever was left. I didn’t realize you wanted me to save some.” Felix took a step back.
“You okay?” Varex scowled.
Felix nodded and shrugged, “I’m good. You guys can bottle up all the rest.”
“No…” Aela smirked suggestively, “How much more can you take?”
He shrugged, “All of it.”
She raised a brow, “You seem so sure.”
Felix just stared back at her confidently. She turned back to Varex, “Let’s get to the next one, then we’ll rest.”
He nodded and began leading while everyone else followed, despite some protests.
The next cluster was even bigger, thrice the size of the last but Felix consumed it just as quickly as the last. This time, Kether seemed annoyed but didn’t say anything. All of them seemed exhausted and not really willing to talk.
Instead, Varex pitched a tent that was only really barely big enough for 4 people then stepped inside. The rest of the party followed with Felix last. Felix was completely expecting to find the tent was spatially expanded on the inside, but it wasn’t. Instead, Aela sat at the center, with the others around her in their preferred meditative pose.
Felix took a seat where there was an opening around Aela and she reached out to touch him.
His hand shot forward to prevent her rather vulgar trajectory and as soon as his hand touched hers, he felt a slight tug on his Soul. He realized what was happening but stared at her for a moment. She met his gaze and smirked, then pulled harder. He continued to resist and her smile grew wider and her expression, even more enticed.
Finally, Felix let her pull a small portion of his Soul into her Constructed Memory, remaining connected to his real Soul in his body through her hand.
It was harder for her to maintain than holding any of the others, but it would be easier than having her try and house his actual Soul.
Inside, Felix immediately appeared inside what appeared to be either a strip club or a brothel. He was on a circular couch along with Kether, Varex and Rel. In the center of the booth, were nearly naked men and women serving them drinks and food from platters. All of them, were Aela. The women and men serving them, somehow.
“This is how you all rest every night?”
Rel’s cheeks immediately reddened and Varex snorted, “No. She’s just doing this cause you’re new.”
One of the waitress’ placed her platter down then sat next to Felix, almost on top of him and spoke into his ear, “In here… I can do to you everything you’ve ever dreamed.”
“I’m good.” Felix pushed her away as politely as he could.
She sighed, “I’ll figure you out soon, challenger.”
“Hmm.” Felix turned his attention away from Aela and shifted it towards her Constructed Memory. It was definitely impressive but Felix immediately noticed flaws and issues with it. It relied heavily on manipulating Soul experiences and the experiences that lay within them.
For things Felix hadn’t experienced, they simply didn’t exist or fell flat. For the most part that was smells and sounds which he smelt and heard but they were single noted and empty. His Mental World used simulations and the experiences of millions to fuel it. Even if someone there hadn’t ever experienced something before, he could show it to them. He could create new experiences.
Her’s on the other hand, could be more meaningful and nostalgic. Most importantly though for the moment, it was less taxing and essentially amounted to sleep, for those that needed it.
Felix mentally noted some of the differences and his various observations then returned his consciousness to his body, much to Aela’s disappointment.
There, he waited for the others to sleep, within their essentially shared dream, while he began practicing Spell Forms, with slightly renewed vigor after speaking with Rel over the past few dekads.
It took them a grand total of two more dekads, just as Varex had said it would to reach every anomaly. Felix only harvested one and half more because Kether was growing increasingly bothered by Felix taking them. He’d rather be on good terms and have them lead him to the city than be on bad terms and get abandoned. He knew he definitely could have kept going, even if it meant creating new planets instead of funneling everything into his Soul’s structure.
Varex had somewhat planned a loop, as well as he could which just meant when there were two clusters in one realm, he would lead them to one on the way down and the other as they headed back. Most realms only had one anomaly though so most of the time they were heading back, there was no harvesting.
They rested every few days in the tent and in Aela’s Constructed Memory while Felix patiently waited for them.
They passed through the 2142nd realm and only stopped for a single night at the cottage to rest outside of the tent. Aela cooked and it tastes awful but Felix simply turned off his sense of taste which made him Aela’s favorite for the time being.
Once Felix was finished eating, no one else had finished eating as they were taking the smallest bites they could and talking as much as possible to procrastinate each and ever bite.
“I was worried for a bit there that we weren’t going to have any ros to bottle up.” Kether smirked in Felix’s direction.
“Sorry.” Felix shrugged, “What do you do with it? You mentioned refining it?”
Varex nodded, “Needs to be refined ’fore we can use it.”
“What is it refined into?”
“Ros.” Kether answered.
“I thought… It was- is ros right now?” Felix looked around.
Aela sighed and shook her head, “We use ros as currency in Azura. Refining is a bit of a silly word to use. We just hand over what we’ve collected to the mints and they exchange it for ros taking a small fee.”
Felix nodded, “Gotcha. So you hand over ros and they package it up into specific quantities to keep everything normalized?”
Kether nodded, “Yup.”
“How do they package it?”
Varex reached into a pocket and tossed a small handful of coins made from gemstones onto the table. There were three varieties there, a small green coin, a slightly larger yellow one and an orange one that was thicker but otherwise the same size as the yellow one. With his Matter Senses, Felix could tell each coin was completely flawless in structure, despite the designs they had on each side. There were no faces or other recognizable imagery, just some abstract patterns on each.
With his Anima senses, he could more or less gauge himself that the green coin was one Muros. The yellow one had 100,000 times more Anima than the green one making it one Sinros. Finally the orange coin had 100,000 times more Anima in it than the yellow one, making it one Pheros.
Felix nodded in understanding, “How big do the coins get?”
Kether chuckled, “You’ll probably never see anything bigger than a Pheros.”
“After Pheros is a Biiros, they’re red.” Aela answered, “Then there’s Emros which are purple and Xyros which are blue.”
“I assume the scale is linear? 100,000 times bigger each time?”
Aela nodded, “To that point. After that, everything is specialty and the scale breaks.”
Kether pointed his fork at Felix, “I’ve heard the Zephtide Clan head has a Zytros on his desk. That’s 20 factors more than a Xyros.”
“By 20 factors… you mean 10 to the 20 times bigger… than a Xyros?”
Aela nodded in response, “Yes. There aren’t even many Xyros in the city as a whole though. You’d never be able to use that thing to buy anything or harvest.”
“Why not?” Felix looked around at them, “Couldn’t you just slowly drain it forever?”
Varex shook his head, “To get that much ros in one damn coin… taking even a little bit out, the whole thing would explode.”
“You have to be very skilled to extract anything from a Pheros. Let alone anything denser than that.” Aela smiled.
Felix nodded quickly, “Which means you end up trading in larger coins for smaller ones at the mint to harvest. There are fees on both ends and those are adjusted to keep everything balanced.”
“Smart kid.” Varex took a minuscule bite of his food.
“So not everyone is harvesting, right?” Felix looked around, “I take it there are normal jobs too?”
“Sure.” Kether nodded, “Most people have multiple jobs. We hunt, delve and harvest.”
“Most of us have other jobs too.” Varex nodded.
“Hunting? Delving? There’s nothing here…” Felix said hopefully.
“Closer to the city, the zones are less dead.” Varex explained.
“They’re also kind of fucking ginormous.” Kether added with a smirk.
“Any ideas what the zones are? Why they exist and why there are connections between them?”
Kether shrugged, “The big families, clans and companies might know but… not sure anyone really knows.”
“Maybe if you ascend…” Rel quietly added.
“What’s ascending?”
Aela shook her head and waved him off, “Azura is on the second to last zone. The one after Azura is a traditional zone. You enter and can’t leave until it’s complete.”
“What’s… in it?”
Varex responded “The Acharaya.”
“The what?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Varex shook his head.
“What if I wanted to leave?”
“Gotta go through the Acharaya.” Aela shrugged and offered an expression of pity.
“Or the Dragon.” Kether pointed his fork at Aela.
“All the zones between the Dragon and Azura are… broken.” Aela explained, “They were broken open a long time ago and all remain connected to this day. You have to complete a zone to leave.”
“There’s an exit on the 2000th though?” Felix frowned.
“Yes but the challenge is still there.” Kether nodded with a smirk.
“Which is more likely for me to get through?”
Aela shrugged, “We all know the Dragon. We don’t know much about The Acharaya. Some kind of Spirit Guru. No one comes back to Azura from that zone but challengers have legends of other challengers that have made it through.”
“So there isn’t anyone in Azura strong enough to kill The Dragon?”
Kether cocked his head to the side, “Some of the big Clans and Companies might be able to…”
Varex shook his head, “They’ve tried in the past. Never works out.”
“Who’s the strongest in the city and how strong are they?”
Kether shrugged and looked at Varex who shrugged and looked at Aela. She shrugged as well, “No idea. Not strong enough to kill The Dragon?”
Right, they don’t have levels… It’s not easy to just compare people. Damn.
“So what do people do in Azura? I take it you aren’t all struggling to buy food?”
“No.” Varex shook his head.
“Everyone’s strong enough that they could just drop a few zones and hang out there even if they were completely broke. You can usually get a place for dirt cheap in the city too.” Kether nodded, “No need to worry about that. We’ll hit a few hunts on the way back and…” Kether looked at Aela.
She nodded, “We’ll give you a small cut of everything we’ve harvested, 5%?” She looked around at the rest of her party who all nodded.
Aela leaned over the table and poked Felix in the head, “Just remember who helped you out. Plus, we expect you to pay us all back, 5% each.”
Felix cocked a brow, “You want me to pay you back 4 times? In how long?”
“An epoch?” She smirked.
There was no financial reason for him to accept the offer and it made more sense for him to just hand in some Anima to the mint himself. Socially though, being in debt to all of them, was a connection and in their minds, he would be an investment to each of them. It gave them a reason to help him out in the future.
“Sure.” Felix shrugged, “That seems reasonable. Where I should go to make ros?”
“You could get a job.” Varex offered.
“Or…” Kether leaned in over the table, “You could gamble what we give you at The House of Promises.”
“Casino?” Felix asked.
Rel nodded and rolled her eyes, Varex nodded as well but Kether and Aela shook their heads.
“It’s not just some casino.” Kether seemed offended, “It’s got that kind of gambling too, sure. It’s also got all kinds of fights.”
Felix perked up when he heard that, “What kind of fights?”
“Duels, Spirit Fights, Mana War…” Aela listed off.
Felix’s eyes went wide at that. Varex on the other hand, rolled his eyes and leaned back, “Don’t bother kid. It’s not worth it. Just find something you’re good at and you’ll make plenty of ros.”
Rel nodded in agreement.
“Anyways.” Kether stretched his arms upwards, “I’m gonna go sleep for real.”
Varex nodded and rose from his seat as well.
Looking around, Felix realized their food had magically vanished somehow, from barely having been touched a moment ago. Rel still had hers in front of her and looked at it with disappointment.
The party slept for almost an entire day while Felix waited for them. Instead of practicing anything to do with his Spells though, he spent the time refining and compressing his own Soul. He also spent a bit of time trying to figure out if he could integrate Concepts into his current Soul structure. Mostly, Concepts aligned with defense into his Mana Skin layer.
He didn’t get very far with that though in just one day.
After that, they continued traveling through the realms though, there were no more anomalies to harvest. As they ascended through the 2’s, which Felix learned was slang for the realms in the 2200s, they began to see other people.
They never stopped or had any trouble, but there were individuals and other parties in the realms. Felix couldn’t tell what they were doing at first. Then, in the 3’s, there were monsters and beasts roaming the lands and some of the individuals and parties they saw were fighting and hunting those beasts.
The 4’s were where it started to get really busy because the fauna was much denser and more present along with, what Felix interpreted as dungeons. They were really ruins of old realms that were all spliced into the 4’s for some reason but the way the party described heading into them and exploring them, getting around traps to open vaults and find treasure, sounded like what he would consider a System dungeon.
Azura, as it turned out, was on the 2499th realm. Which meant the last realm would be the 2500th.
The dozen or so realms leading up to The Ephemeral City, were all packed. Not just with hunters and dungeon delvers, but more so with villages and cities. Some of them had farms that Felix could tell were more than just simple farms, with tall fences all around the crops and a dense Aura covering the fields.
There were also small villages off in nature, for those that simply didn’t want to live in the city and for those that wanted to be closer to the lower realms. Varex pointed out a few guilds and Dungeon Management Offices, as Felix was calling them, on those realms and in and around them, lived many of those who delved into dungeons full time.
The mint where they traded in the large crystals of Anima they had collected from the anomalies, was on the 2498th realm. It was a massive facility that was entirely embedded within the ground for some reason. The only part of it that was above ground, was the building where they exchanged currency which simply held a number of booths with clerks side by side.
Behind that building, there was simply a large flat area of blue and grey that marked the top of the facility, flush with the grassy field all around it. The footprint of the facility alone, was so large it eclipsed the footprint of multiple mountains behind it.
Walking up to one of the booths, Aela placed the crystals they had collected onto the desk and the clerk began measuring them. It took a few minutes and once she was done, the clerk nodded to them, “23 Pheros, 4% fee.”
Aela nodded and Kether groaned.
Felix looked at him curiously.
“4% my ass. We bottled that ros up as good as ever.”
“I thought it was based on balancing how much people are swapping currency?”
Aela turned slightly stretching out her chest as she did so, still leaning one arm against the counter, “The base rate is currently 2%. The rest of the fee is based on how well you can transport it. Good gems, pure Anima, how densely it’s packed in all play a role.”
A few minutes later, the clerk returned with a small stack of 22 pheros.
“The other 8000 Sinros were deposited in your account Ms Aela.”
She nodded and thanked the clerk then turned back to the rest of them.
Aela handed Felix one Pheros and the rest of them 5, pocketing her 6 at the end.
“You can have the 10,400 Sinros anytime you’d like, just come and as-”
“Can I have them right now?”
She looked at him like he was insane, a thought the rest of the party seemed to share, “You want to try and carry 10,000 coins out of here?”
“Is Spatial Storage rare in here?” Felix looked at the rest of them.
Varex nodded appreciatively, “Yes. Everyone has a Soul Space but you can’t carry much in those. I assume you’ve opened yours?”
Felix nodded, “Am I in danger showing off my Spatial Storage items?”
Kether shrugged, “Depends. can you kill anyone who might notice you?”
“Probably not.”
“Then maybe.”
Aela shook her head, “You are unlikely to be robbed for it. I wouldn’t worry.”
“So, can I get those Sinros now?”
Aela shrugged and turned back to the clerk, “10,400 Sinros from my account please.”
She nodded and darted off to retrieve the currency.
It took the clerk much longer this time and when she returned, Felix took all the Sinros and began funneling them into his Kryptos Repository temporarily. He didn’t want to show off the fact that his Soul Space was as big as it was considering what Varex had said about their limited size.
After they left the mint, Felix moved his Kryptos Repository into his Soul Space where he emptied it out and left the bracelet for the time being.
Finally, they headed for the exit to the realm which, was an iridescent bubble floating in the air just like it had been on every other realm except this time, there was a massive line heading into the bubble and there was a building built around it.
The building was really just a large tube with a wall in the middle. In the middle of the wall at the center, was the iridescent bubble. Everyone coming out of the bubble came out one side of the tube and everyone going in, went in the other.
They didn’t have to wait more than an hour, despite the length of the line, to get through the bubble due to the well planned logistics. On the other side, there was another tube like building around the bubble to ensure everyone went in and out on the correct sides and as soon as they left, they had to rush to clear the area and make room for those behind them.
Once they were clear of the crowd though, Felix was free to look around and appreciate the fact that he was standing on a cloud. Looking around, the city was massive and stretched out in every direction across multiple clouds. There was a massive dark grey and angry storm cloud that housed a number of large glass sky scrapers. There was a fluffy white cloud that was anything but flat housing a number of colorful buildings. There was a grouping of small clouds, each one holding a single building and all floating around each-other.
Dozens of individual sections all spread across various clouds formed a single massive city.
“Why is it called The Ephemeral City?” Felix asked a question he had been wondering for a while as they headed into one of the larger sections of the city.
“Building a city on clouds is idiotic.” Varex grumbled.
“Doesn’t make any logistical sense, even if it is possible.” Kether nodded.
“Only reason it exists is because the zone does all the hard work.” Aela smiled.
“Right but ephemeral…”
She shrugged, “It’s a bit of a joke because everyone knows it shouldn’t exist and used to be worried about everything falling through the clouds.”
“That’s ancient history though.” Kether yawned.
Rel nodded along as they spoke.
Aela turned to her, “Don’t you have a shift in less than an hour?”
Her eyes shot open and she leapt into the air, creating an explosion behind her and launching herself into the distance.
Kether chuckled and Varex waved to the others, “See you guys tomorrow.”
Aela and Kether nodded and waved back as Varex left.
Turning to Felix, Kether smiled wickedly, “You’re coming with us, right?”
He shrugged, “Where are you going?”
“House of Promises.”