While the conversation with Godovan was interesting in a certain sense, it wasn’t what Felix had hoped. He continued to examine items and his keepers continued to die. It was boring and slow and he felt like he was getting nowhere.
Woodruff kept assuring him he was doing a great job and Varex and Kether were convinced he would be recruited by some large faction soon enough, even if it was for a one off job. That wasn’t enough for Felix though.
His matches against Mist continued every dekad but she wasn’t a challenge and whenever Felix brought up the prospect of playing against anyone in her family other than her, she immediately changed the subject.
He’d been in the city for almost an epoch and he felt like he was making no progress towards any of his own goals.
He wasn’t getting any stronger. He wasn’t learning anything about anything. He wasn’t any closer to beating The Dragon.
He felt completely stagnant.
The fact that Grim and some of the Residents remained dour and rather silent, didn’t help either. Even Edira, who had migrated into his head, was either focused or depressed.
However they felt though, Felix couldn’t keep going on and getting nothing done. Before he started looking for things himself though, he figured he would ask the residents of Azura that he talked to regularly.
“Is there anything else I can do on the side? To make more ros or maybe even a school or something?”
“One of those eh?” Kether nodded, his arms crossed.
“There haven’t been any interesting dungeons?” He looked at Varex hopefully.
He shook his head, “Takes longer than a single epoch. Dungeons are a big event. You’ll know.”
Felix sighed, “Alright. I’ll look for something on my own then.”
Kether nodded slowly and Varex looked at Kether. They had some kind of silent conversation with their eyes alone that Felix wasn’t privy to and he didn’t bother paying much attention to it.
“Felix, how do would you feel about…” Kether started.
“Taking some big risks.” Varex continued.
“To get even bigger rewards.” Kether finished.
Felix looked up at the two of them and shrugged, “Gambling is stupid. The risk to reward ratio is not worth it.”
“Not that.” Varex shook his head.
“More like… life threatening, make a lot of enemies, kind of danger.” Kether smiled.
“Are there some really hard dungeons or something?” Felix was starting to become interested.
“No. Well, yes but,-” Kether shook his head, “-that’s not what we’re talking about.”
Varex nodded, “Meet us at the cottage tomorrow night.”
Felix didn’t press further, aware that they seemed unwilling to continue in their current venue, “Alright but… tomorrow night? Is there a faster way to get there that I don’t know about?”
Kether smiled and nodded, “A long time ago, shortly after the realms were connected, a whole lot of people had this same issue. They want to travel the realms, delve into dungeons and all that but getting through a realm is a pain in the ass.”
“We’ve since managed to open rifts across multiple realms.” Varex cut off Kether’s long winded story.
Felix’s eyes widened a little, “Why didn’t we take one of those on our way here?”
“Can only go through once you’ve been to a realm. Otherwise the zone stops you from going through.” Kether shrugged.
“So you were just escorting me then?”
The both of them nodded and Kether shrugged.
“Okay, where do I find these rifts? How do I know which one to take?”
“There’s a registry of the well known rifts. Use those tomorrow and we’ll show you some lesser known rifts once you get there.” Kether offered.
Felix looked at the both of them but neither of them seemed willing to share more at the moment so he just nodded, “Alright then.”
They finished their meal in the casino and Felix stuck around for a little while before leaving. From the casino, he found his way to the registry in the city and mapped out his route back to the cottage in the 2142nd realm. From what he could tell, he figured it would take him a couple hours of travel time in total, which was a marked improvement but also left him with almost a day in the city. Luckily, that meant he didn’t have to cancel his match with Mist Ryko the next day.
From The House of Promises, he headed over to work at Cumulo Tech where he met up with his current keeper, a woman who had lasted nearly a dekad up to that point, multiple times longer than any other keepers assigned to him.
Together, they headed to a floor Felix hadn’t been on yet that looked just like the others. They opened a few vaults, took some notes and nothing was different from his every day of work before that.
A slight improvement to his boredom was when they reached a particularly powerful item in one of the vaults. As soon as the door on the airlock had opened, Felix could feel the item was cursed.
It looked like a full height mirror and the curse Felix felt was the Curse of Desire. It was fitting for a mirror except it was different from what Felix knew of the Curse. When he had encountered the curse before, it had shown him things he wanted in an attempt to draw him into it. The secrets of the universe, power and the origin of The System.
Somehow though, the mirror was not only containing the Curse and not getting consumed by it but it was also altering and channeling its effects. The mirror didn’t blast Felix’s Soul with offerings of his every desire, instead it was much more subtle. The mirror showed him his happiest memories.
For Felix, they were almost entirely centered around fights and breakthroughs. When he finally beat the Griffin, woke up after beating the Kraken, when Erolan told him he was going to fight his Soul directly, when he first overcame the Hunger and touched it without being infected.
The memories were pleasant but, Felix suspected the mirror would have been more effective on someone else.
Especially since he could feel the mirror trying to worm its way into his Soul, trying to draw him in. It was subtle and directed compared to the raw Curse. It was also much weaker and completely ineffective on Felix.
Stepping back into the airlock, he headed back out into the hall after clearing the airlock of any residual Curse in the ambient Anima. He gave his report to the keeper and she diligently and silently copied down what he was saying, as she always did.
In fact, she had talked to him a total of 3 times since he’d met her. When they first met she gave him her name and since then she had had 2 clarifying questions about items over the last dekad.
So, when she spoke, it actually caught him by surprise, “The mirror is Cursed?”
Felix nodded, “Curse of Desire.”
“Are you certain?”
Felix shrugged, “I have a lot of experience with Curses. I’m certain.”
She stared down at her clipboard in thought for a moment then finally nodded after a minute, “Come with me.”
Felix raised a brow but followed, since he had nowhere else to go.
Instead of a vault or outside the building though, she led him back to Woodruff’s office. If she hadn’t been weird about the mirror being cursed, he would have assumed she was asking about switching away from being his keeper. He still wondered if that was the case despite his doubts as they walked.
Opening the door to Woodruff’s office, Felix’s keeper stepped forwards and stood with a confident posture Felix hadn’t seen out of her ever before.
“Looks like yev come to a conclusion then?” Woodruff looked at the keeper.
She nodded once, “I need your permission to verify the most recent vault first.”
He nodded then looked at Felix, “What was in it?”
“A big mirror. Curse of Desire. Shows memories.”
Woodruff frowned, “Curse… ye certain?”
Felix nodded, “Yes.”
“Which vault?”
“842-933-A” The keeper answered immediately.
Woodruff pulled over a large binder from the corner of his desk and began flipping through it, face contorted in a frown. He spotted the entry he was looking for and nodded down at it, “Rift artifact… huh.”
Felix stepped forwards, “A what?”
“Rift artifact.” Woodruff shut the binder and stood, “Means it popped out’tuv a rift.”
“Like… the rifts that move you between realms?” Felix frowned in confusion.
He nodded, “Not all the rifts move from one realm to another. A good number of em go nowhere.”
His keeper turned towards the door and walked right past him, “They aren’t listed on the registry and are usually guarded and hidden.”
Woodruff followed her, “Fer this reason. Sometimes shit comes out of em. We keep a vault around em, when something comes out, we swap the vault and send er here.”
“So no one’s actually seen that thing then.” Felix nodded in understanding.
“Yer the first. If it’s what you say it is, we need to deal with it sooner rather en later.”
Felix followed the two of them back to the vault he had come from and waited outside as the keeper turned to Woodruff, seemingly unsure of what to do.
Woodruff nodded to Felix, “Ssuming it’s what you say… can I survive it?”
Felix shrugged, “How am I supposed to answer that for you?”
He chuckled, “I was a Damned long ago. S’been a while but I can’t afford to send in others when they’re guaranteed to die.”
“You ever dealt with Curses before?” Felix cocked his head.
“A few.” Woodruff shrugged, “Always avoided em. I should be able to recognize and confirm what yer sayin though.”
Felix nodded, “All I can say is the effect was subtle and don’t look at the mirror for too long.”
Woodruff nodded, taking a deep breath. Then, he turned to the keeper and she opened the first door for them. The two of them stepped in and Woodruff turned to Felix, “Pull me out in one second if I’m not responding.”
Felix nodded and they opened the door in front of them.
As it slid open, nothing seemed to happen at first. Woodruff seemed completely normal. Once it was open far enough that he could see the mirror, he was instantly transfixed.
Felix listened to his instructions and waited but just a fifth of a second past and he leapt forwards towards the mirror.
Felix leapt after him and managed to grab his ankle, pulling him to the ground a few meters short of him touching the mirror. Woodruff looked back, his face filled with rage as he kicked at Felix’s hands and face.
His strength was enough that he did damage but not enough that he broke free of Felix’s grasp.
Felix didn’t have a good way of shielding Woodruff from the mirror but, he could do the opposite so, he began pulling and climbing his way up Woodruff’s body. Woodruff fought back but once Felix used Force Spells on the both of them, he managed to slowly move himself in front of Woodruff.
Placing himself between Woodruff and the mirror, Felix reached out and grabbed the mirror, forcing it into his Soul Space. The mirror was a little big but he managed to do it and as soon as it was there, Woodruff went limp.
Felix sighed in relief then carried Woodruff back to the airlock, sealing him in there for the time being. Then, he hit the button for the keeper to let them out and replaced the mirror. A few minutes passed before Felix was allowed to leave the room as well while the airlock reset.
Back on the outside, Felix nodded to Woodruff who was hunched over, “You okay?”
He groaned, “I don’t ’member what happened….”
“You tried to leap into the mirror.”
“I… I did?”
“Yup.”
“How’d you…. stop me?”
“I hid the mirror in a spatial pocket, moved you into the airlock then put it back.”
He nodded and slowly corrected his posture, “You touched it?”
Felix nodded.
The keeper who had been with them nodded to Woodruff, “I’ve come to a decision.”
“Damn right you did.”
“What’s happening?” Felix looked at both of them in turn.
She turned to Felix, “My name is Maclethil, please call me Mac. I am one of the Procurement Specialists for the Storm Sect.”
“I thought your name was Asil?”
She shook her head, “No. I was evaluating you. We have need of a specialized Damned to examine a few particularly… troublesome items we have recently acquired.”
“I see. Spiritual in nature then?”
Mac nodded, “Precisely. If you are interested, we need you to join us in a dekad at the Storm Sect Vault Facility B5. I will present you with the specifics then and if acceptable, we will employ your services for a period of 4 dekads. Should your services be deemed acceptable, there is opportunity for future cooperation as well.”
Felix nodded, “Sure. See you then.”
She looked at Woodruff with a look of slight pity for a moment then walked off, presumably out of the building.
“That isn’t an issue for you? That I leave for a while?”
Woodruff snorted, “I get a finder’s fee for pointing her in yer direction. From the Storm Sect, it ain’t a pittance.”
“Speaking of, what is the Storm Sect? I didn’t want to seem rude by asking her.”
He chuckled, “Good call. Storm Sect is the biggest… group? After Ano. Old as the families but without just a single lineage.”
“Ano?”
“Bunch of old families that were shrinking and dying out. They instead decided to all become one entity.”
Felix nodded, “So there’s Ryko which is an old family. Ano is a number of old families that is now one entity. Then there’s Mortalbane which is a hunting company and finally the Storm Sect which is a sect, not a family?”
“There’s also the Gera family, old as the Ryko’s but less traditional and more split up across branches.”
“Gotcha. And those are all the big players in the city?”
“Yeah, side from Rokrunor which’s been round long as the families.”
Felix groaned, “Who’s that?”
Woodruff waved him off, “Ye already know bout em. They’re the bank in the city?”
“Oh. The ros refinery and all that?”
Woodruff nodded, “Yup. They also manage a few vaults and some such but mostly they just oversee the currency.”
“Gotcha. Speaking of families… I have a match soon and the last time I was late she made me play with a single point of Mana the whole time. Mind if I head out?”
Woodruff nodded, “Course.”
“Are you gonna be okay?”
He straightened up and stretched, “I’ll be fine. Just a lil rusty is all.”
Felix watched him for a few moments before concluding he was fine and leaving.
Sitting across the arena from Mist, Felix used just 5 points of Mana to her 500 and deftly moved his Mana from one side of the field to the other in an instant to repel her advances.
Every time they played, much to Mist’s dismay, Felix was getting better and by comparison, she wasn’t improving a noticeable amount at all.
“Once again I have been defeated.” She sighed and chuckled slightly.
“Am I down to 4 points now?”
“This point measurement you use is still new to me. How much were you using this time?”
“5.”
She nodded, “It seems this effort is wasted. You are improving faster than I am. I will never catch you.”
Felix nodded, “Yes but I still enjoy playing you more than I enjoy playing anyone else. It’s still fun.”
“You would have more fun against my father.” She looked over at Renson who always stood at the entrance to the room and he nodded.
“I believe it is time you meet the rest of my family.” She addressed Felix.
Felix bowed quickly, trying to be as respectful as possible, “I would be honored.”
She giggled, “Do not fear your composure. My family is more interested in what you can offer them than your manners.”
“All I have to offer is a match of Mana War…”
“That will be enough.” She smirked, “Assuming you do not lose shamefully.”
“I’ll do my best.” Felix nodded, “When?”
“My father is not in the city. I will have him join us when he returns. He will determine if you are to meet the rest of our family.”
Felix bowed again, “Thank you. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I appreciate your dedication to playing with me. I can tell your enjoyment is minimal, despite what you might say. Your persistence however, is commendable.”
Felix shrugged, “I’ve been told. As is yours, playing me every dekad.”
She smirked, “Yes well. I believe you were to play with 4 points, was it?”
He sighed, “Fine.”
They continued playing for the rest of the day before Felix finally left and headed immediately towards the nearest rift.
He didn’t know what was so secret that they needed him at the cottage to tell him but it was like all of a sudden, everything was happening at once for Felix. He was finally scouted by a larger organization from Cumulo Tech, as Varex had assured him would happen. Playing Mist was finally paying off exactly as he had hoped and possibly there would even be a secret dungeon or something he was being let in on.
The rift was about what Felix expected. Rift was the most appropriate name for what looked and felt like a tear in space. He was hesitant at first to head through it but the traffic passing through it was enough to assuage his concerns.
The tear was nearly 20 meters tall and wide enough for 6 lanes of people to be heading through it, 3 down and 3 up.
After that first rift, each rift afterwards was smaller with less traffic until he was finally forced to travel through a few dozen empty realms with no connecting rift. As he got further and further away, he began to wonder why they had and needed the cottage at all.
If it were just for when they harvested anomalies on the lower realms, they could have used rifts to get closer.
Instead, the cottage seemed to be in the hardest possible realm to reach with the closest rifts being as far away as possible.
Entering the familiar small stone building, Felix saw everyone was already there. Rel and Varex were at the table, talking in hushed tones while Aela and Kether were lazily throwing cards at a table in between the couches.
“Felix!” Rel smiled and waved.
He nodded to her and closed the door behind him, “What was so secretive that we could only talk about it in the hardest possible realm to reach?”
Kether sat up a little and smirked, “You noticed that?”
“I didn’t think about it until I learned about the rifts and read through the registry but, yes.”
Varex nodded once, “Smart kid.”
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Aela squinted at him, “Are you sure Var?”
Varex nodded, “We need a Damned. He’s the best option.”
She sighed, “Fine.”
Smirking, Kether rose from the couch and crossed his arms, “As for what’s so secretive… we’ve got an offer for you.”
“Something morally ambiguous judging from our last conversation?” Felix cocked a brow.
“Not morally ambiguous at all. Just plain wrong.” Varex offered plainly.
Kether leaned in, “How do you feel about theft?”
Felix didn’t immediately answer and just looked at each of them who were all looking at him as everything began to click together in his mind, “You’re a crew. You guys all work together to steal shit. Aela is the personal distraction, Rel is on explosions and fire power, Varex is stealthy and Kether fights. Judging from the size of the crew and the fact that you have this cottage, I take it your aren’t just committing petty theft. You aren’t big enough to be infiltrating any of the big families or corporations though.”
“Mostly small companies. We target ros for the most part, easier to transport.” Varex offered.
“Thing is…” Kether smiled, standing back up straight, “We recently got a… unique opportunity.”
“You need a Damned to transport something?” Felix nodded, “What’s the item?”
“Not quite. We wouldn’t be stealing it if it were that dangerous.” Kether shook his head, “Thing is, Damned that survive long as you have are rare. Rare enough that vaults are often sealed and protected by Spiritual wards and dangerous items. They make it so only a select few can even think about getting near them.”
“We’re going after an set of weapons that’re being transported into Azura.” Varex answered.
“From where? How do you know about them?”
“Adventuring party in a dungeon is sponsored by Ryko. Contract says they give up the 5 best items they find. Contract is Soul binding. Nothing stops em from getting us to steal them back.” Varex gestured towards Kether, “This one is his old friend.”
Felix let his shoulders drop in slight disappointment, “I was kind of hoping you’d say you were going after a mirror.”
“A mirror?” Kether looked at the rest of his crew, “Why?”
Felix shrugged, “It’s sitting in Cumulo Tech, cursed and almost drove Woodruff insane.”
Kether looked at Varex and Aela looked up, “So, are you in?” She stood and glided across the room, getting uncomfortably close to Felix, “If not… we’ll need you to make a Soul Oath right now that you won’t tell…”
Felix didn’t answer immediately. On the one hand he didn’t have any moral objections to stealing and he wanted to make ros faster. He was sick of just sitting around doing nothing. On the other hand, if he was caught he would either be killed or fired and there was no way Mist Ryko would introduce him to her family. There wasn’t a ton of benefit there, but he wanted to play her father who she was certain would be a good match for him. If there were other family members who were as good or better, he didn’t want to lose that chance.
Ultimately he didn’t think about it for very long though, “I take it this is a small job intended as a trial run?”
“Something like that.” Kether shrugged.
“Alright, when is it?”
“We have to leave in 26 minutes.” Varex answered immediately.
Felix cocked a brow, “What if I hadn’t made it by then?”
“We’d have figured out a way to do it without you.” Kether shrugged.
“Usually that means Rel blows shit up and we pick through the wreckage.” Aela teased.
Rel’s cheeks immediately reddened.
“Is there a plan then?”
Varex nodded, “Yes. Kether and Aela are too arrogant to listen to it though.”
Felix walked over to the table and took the seat across from Varex and next to Rel, “So what’s the plan?”
Varex nodded appreciatively as Kether and Aela went back to playing cards.
The plan itself was rather simple, the weapons were being transported from a dungeon in the low 4’s. They weren’t just carted straight into Azura though, instead they had to sit in a vault in the same realm as the dungeon while a Damned reviewed them to ensure they weren’t too dangerous to transport.
Once the Damned had reviewed them, the weapon’s deemed safe would be moved to a transportation container which would contain them during transport. According to Varex, some items from dungeons in the past had reacted weirdly to being transported through realms and across spaces so they used durable containers and they would be inspected by a Damned on the other side.
They also wouldn’t be stored in anyone’s Soul Space because apparently some people had been possessed in the past by items.
The transport containers were surrounded by a contingent of guards. 4 guards with the container and a series of 32 guards all positioned along the path of the container. They would start with the guards near the container then spread themselves out slowly as the container moved.
It was a complicated process but it ensured that there were 36 guards within 5 realms of the transport at all times and 18 within 2 realms. It also let the guards ahead of the container look out for potential ambushes ahead of time.
As Varex explained all this to Felix, he was expecting the plan to be complex. Instead, they were going to have Rel create a big distraction while Aela distracted some guards in the adjacent realms and Kether dealt with the others. Varex was escorting Felix who had to open the container because the container itself, was too easy to track.
They had their own container that Varex would be carrying but Felix intended on simply carrying them within his Soul Space. He didn’t tell Varex that though because he seemed to believe it was way too risky.
Felix, didn’t exactly share his worries.
Once the time came, Varex led them through a rift that wasn’t listed on the registry and was hidden within a cave on either side followed by a few other secret rifts. They avoided the registry listed rifts because the path they were taking there was also their escape route. Taking the same route on the way there meant they all knew how to get back.
Aela split off from the rest of them a few realms away and she headed off to distract the guards in the adjacent realms.
Kether, Varex, Rel and Felix all arrived just a few minutes before the weapons were being transported. If they arrived any earlier, the guards would assume they were there to do exactly what they were trying to do.
The vault building in the realm was boring and unexciting, much like the building Felix worked in.
Outside of it, stood a contingent of 24 guards. They weren’t planning on engaging just yet so they simply watched as a large metal crate a few meters wide was floated out of the building and the guards surrounded it. Then, they moved it along towards the next realm.
Felix, Varex, Kether and Rel all left before it and used a rift to skip a few realms, then they laid in wait as it made its way towards them.
They couldn’t remain anywhere near the cache’s path as the guards in the Realm would find them in their scouting but, Varex had an item to solve that exact problem that would let them teleport a long distance within a single realm without an anchor at the destination. The no anchor part was important because it was something the guards specifically looked for.
Apparently items like that were very rare in the realms so Felix didn’t mention he could do that himself relatively easily and kept that secret for the time being.
They timed things nearly perfectly and teleported just a few hundred meters from the cache. There were a dozen guards at that point and as soon as they arrived, they were all sent flying, along with their target.
Felix stared in amazement at the destruction Rel had managed to cause with a single Spell and Varex grabbed his arm, “Let’s go.”
He nodded and followed, having to push his speed to keep up with Varex as Rel and Kether rushed in to finish off the guards that had seen them.
The configuration the guards maintained meant they had about 10 seconds before more guards from the adjacent realms joined them. Aela was keeping the next wave after that back and they would take about 30 seconds to arrive.
Varex leapt through the air, grabbed the cache that was still airborne and tossed it down to the ground, along with the empty container he had brought along with him. Felix ignored that though, shoving it into his Soul Space then grabbed the cache they were stealing.
It was a large metal crate, as he had previously seen except there was no obvious way to open it. His Matter Senses told him it was a few inches thick all the way around and completely solid. There were also some of the strongest Anima wards Felix had ever seen inscribed into the container to contain the items within.
Felix didn’t really have a better option so, despite Varex’s previous warning, he punched a hole in the Aether, forming an Aether Tunnel through the box and reached through to grab the items. He immediately felt the effects of the container itself trying to suppress his Soul and knock him unconscious but he completely ignored it. He didn’t pull the items through the Aether Tunnel so he wasn’t moving them across spaces technically. Instead, he pulled them directly into his Soul Space.
At least, he pulled the first few. Then, he lost a few fingers followed by his entire hand to the next few. He pushed on, pressing his stump and using his Tendrils to grab everything else before finally pulling his mangled arm back out and tossing the crate aside.
“Where’s the crate?” Varex rushed over.
“I’ve got it. Let’s go.”
Varex’s eyes filled with anger, “I told you not to-”
“I didn’t, now let’s go.”
He grumbled then ran off, towards the rift they were escaping through, Kether and Rel following closely behind. Looking back, Felix couldn’t spot a single guard that was still alive. Almost all of them, were in pieces scattered all over by Rel’s explosions which left him wondering what Kether had done.
They reached the rift without issue and before the other guards arrived, moving from rift to rift before finally arriving back at the cottage.
As soon as they were there, Varex turned on Felix, “I told you exactly what to do. You ignored the plan.”
“I have the items?”
“I don’t care.” Varex gritted his teeth, “You can’t just do whatever you want because you think you’re right.”
Felix sighed, “You’re worried about me being possessed or something, right?”
“Not really. I care that you follow the plan.”
Felix shrugged, “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t use your crate. It’s just easier to use my Soul Space.”
“Your Soul Space?” Varex looked at him like he was insane, “Our intel says that crate was full.”
Felix walked over to the table and started lining up the items one by one, “Yeah, my Soul Space is a lot bigger than what seems to be normal here.”
Kether walked over excitedly and started examining the weapons, “These all of em?”
“No. The last three removed half my arm as I was moving them so I didn’t put them on the table.”
Kether chuckled, “Good call.” He looked over at Varex, “You’re right, he should have followed the plan. If he really does have a Soul Space as big as he claims and he can handle the items being in there though…”
Rel didn’t say anything but it was clear she didn’t feel the same way as Varex based on her look.
“If it helps convince you not to kick me,-” Felix added after a moment of Varex being completely silent, “-that item you used today to teleport us? I can do that without the item, given 8 seconds or so of wind up.”
Kether coughed, “You can what?”
Felix took a step, opened an Aether Tunnel across the room as he did, then closed it as soon as he had stepped through it, “I haven’t gotten it to be instant yet and the portaless version still takes even longer but, you said that item was pretty rare, right?”
“Cost us half the fucking haul.” Kether blurted out.
Varex still didn’t seem happy, his jaw clenched as the door opened and Aela stepped into the cottage, “Looks like everything went swimmingly then, yeah? No remnants left behind this time?” She asked Kether as she stepped over towards the table, noticing Varex’s expression, “Kid didn’t follow the plan to the letter?”
Kether chuckled, “Ignored a large chunk of it.”
She shrugged, “Looks like it worked out though.”
“Not only that.” Kether excitedly put the weapon back down, “This kid’s a fucking walking ros anomaly. That job we talked about a few dekads ago? We can definitely do it.”
“What happened?” Aela frowned and looked around for an answer.
Varex grumbled and Kether explained, “Kid stored all the weapons in his Soul Space,-” He cut himself off and looked over at Felix, “How big is your Soul Space?”
Felix shrugged, “Could hold a few thousand of these cottages if we stacked em right.”
Everyone in the room stared at him like he was completely insane.
“Technically I adopted a true sub space.”
“A what now?” Kether looked at the others, hoping they knew what Felix was talking about.
It seems… teleportation is super rare and spatial shit is almost non existent… I guess they haven’t reached that point yet? They don’t have Kryptos or Rathelius but still, I didn’t think it was that arcane.
“Nevermind. What’s this job you were going on about?”
Kether’s eyes lit up, “Right, so… There’s a relatively new company in the city that’s been producing items and tech that were nearly impossible to get before.” Kether gestured towards Varex, “It’s how he got his hands on a teleportation item.”
“We figure, since it’s a new company, only showed up in the last dekad, their security won’t be quite as good as some of the other companies.” Aela shrugged.
“Also, we do this job, we could get our hands on everything we need to hit some of the bigger targets we’ve always dreamed of hitting.” Kether excitedly continued.
Felix groaned, “What’s the company called?”
“Wanderer’s Lab.” Kether excitedly said.
Felix sighed, “You can’t rob Wanderer’s Lab.”
Varex, chiming in for the first time since his outburst, “Why not?”
“Well, as of right now they know you want to hit them.” Felix started and continued before anyone could ask, “Plus, there’s no need. I kind of have an in there.”
Aela frowned and looked at Kether who shrugged, “You have an in with them? What’s that mean?”
“We heading back into the city soon? I can show you.”
“First,” Kether began collecting the items, “We gotta hand these off to the client and get paid.”
Varex sighed, “I really wish you had used the crate. Those thing are expensive.”
Kether was about to defend Felix but he simply dropped the crate next to him, “I didn’t leave it there.”
Varex was speechless, Aela giggled and Kether snorted, “Your Soul Space really is fucking huge, huh?”
“That’s going to take some getting used to.” Rel quietly added.
Kether nodded and walked over, placing the items into individual slots within the crate. Once he was done, Felix added the last three items from his Soul Space then closed the crate and pulled it back into his Soul Space, “I can carry it until we get about a Realm away, make things easy.”
Kether shrugged, “Works for me. Usually I’m the one that has to carry them.”
“You guys ever keep the items you steal or you always sell them?”
“Not against it.” Varex grumbled, “Just not usually worth it. Items are too hot.”
“What’s the client going to do with them?”
“They’ll be in dungeons for the next few epochs, no one will remember by then and they can claim they found similar items in the same dungeon.” Kether explained, “They’re Necro-Delvers, they delve into dead dungeons hoping to find something someone missed.”
“Was there… something here you had your eye on?” Rel asked.
“No. Not any of these. Axes and swords aren’t really my thing.”
She nodded, “What’s your preferred weapon?”
“Don’t have one.” Felix shrugged, “I’m open to anything I can cast Spells through. I just haven’t found anything worth using. You don’t use a weapon either, any reason for that?”
She looked down in embarrassment and Kether chuckled, “She likes wands, we just haven’t found one that didn’t explode on her.”
Aela offered her a sympathetic look.
The dropoff was relatively uneventful and mostly involved Kether catching up with an old friend. From there, they headed right back into the city and over to one of the clouds furthest from the center of the Ephemeral City where Wanderer’s Lab was located.
The building was not as nice as the buildings in the city center and it was obviously not a new building but the repairs had gone quite far into making it not seem like it had once been a dump.
Felix walked right up to the door, opened it, and walked inside while Varex, Rel, Aela and Kether all hesitated, unsure if they should be following him. He didn’t bother approaching the front desk as he knew the layout and simply walked right over to one of the empty shafts, flying up to one of the higher floors.
The further they went, the more confused and hesitant the others were until Felix found a conference room and waited for them to finish following him.
“When you said you had a connection…” Aela looked around, trying to determine something from her surroundings.
“He essentially owns the company.” Arysha said through her puppet as she walked into the conference room.
“Not really.” Felix shook his head, “I haven’t ever stepped foot in here before today.”
A black cat came running around the hall outside and through the door, leaping at Felix’s face and excitedly crawling all over his head.
“I somehow… find that hard to believe…” Kether frowned.
Felix extracted his familiar from his face and sighed, “It’s not something I want to fully explain right now.” He turned to Arysha, “I know this isn’t exactly what you were planning but-”
She shook her head, “Not all of us feel the same as Grim. I would still like to see it killed.”
Felix nodded, “I’m a little sick of slowly waiting around. I know this is riskier but, what were the odds we ever got our hands on everything we needed?”
“Near 100% but it would have taken hundreds, if not thousands of epochs.”
Felix sighed, “Yeah. Anyone particularly opposed to accelerating things?”
She smirked, “Some are. Populations are diverse.”
I am. Not just with accelerating things…
Arysha offered Felix a pitiful smile and let Felix talk to Grim as she addressed the others.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but, some of the Residents weren’t as traumatized as y-
You think I care about this? I care that the Residents have agency, can make their own decisions. If some of them choose to return to puppets, so be it.
Then wh-
You can’t seriously be considering going back to fight the Dragon?
Why not? I know what it’s like now. I can plan and prepare. I know how strong I need to be. I-
I don’t care if you think you have a chance. Not every Resident worships you to the point they are willing to just die.
I know. Not much I can do about that. Unless you’ve come up with a way to free them?
You know I haven’t. We both know that’s impossible. Your Soul is the only thing that can contain and keep this many connected Souls stable.
So I just don’t-
I am aware of the problems with what I am saying. We’ve had this argument before.
Look, think about whatever you want but, I’m doing these heists and collecting whatever I can from them. If we can make weapons and equipment and I can get strong enough that I feel like I can fight that thing, I’m doing it. If you can figure out what you want me to do by then, I’m happy to hear it.
Grim was angry but didn’t continue the argument so Felix turned back to the others in the room who were being shown various items the company were working on.
“How long to shift things towards a heist?”
“Depends on how certain of success we must to be.” Arysha answered immediately.
“What are we at now?”
“If we execute properly over an epoch, 85%.” She offered.
“That’s higher than I expected.”
“Not all of us are here in this company.” She smirked, “Since you created us here, we have created more puppets through your familiar and the Soul Forge.”
“You repurposed the Soul Forge to create puppets?”
She nodded, “One of our first tasks.”
“How many Residents are there in Azura now?”
“Not just Azura,” She corrected, “There are some in dungeons and mapping anomalies. There are currently 3894 Residents beyond the 2000th Realm.”
“I…” Felix shook his head, “Holy shit. That’s like… a few Residents a day.”
“No. Most of them here for most of the epoch. The Realmwalker licensing system very strict.”
“The what?”
“System we have to allow Residents to puppet.”
“Gotcha. Where are most of them?”
“Companies and Families. We have 4 in Ryko, 11 in Ano, 2 in Gera, 18 Mortalbane, 2 in Storm and 1 in Rokrunor.”
“I’m sorry, what are Residents and puppets? What do you mean you have 4 in Ryko…” Varex interrupted.
Felix gestured to Arysha’s puppet, “These people live in my head but puppet bodies outside of me.”
“So… When you said you have an in here… you have an in… everywhere?”
Felix shrugged, “Seems like it. I wasn’t tracking them on purpose for the last epoch because of some things that happened before I met you but, yeah. I guess so.”
“So…” Kether looked around at everyone, “What’s the first target?”
Varex was normally the one who came up with a plan for the crew but with Felix’s Residents, there wasn’t any point. They were more people who were overall smarter, had more information and were perfectly coordinated with a network of super computers backing them.
The Residents were better than Felix at recognizing emotions and caring about others though so, they included him in the planning process.
Kether spent that time drooling over various items they had created and asking them about others they could make. From what Felix and his Residents could tell, it was like the entire Realm was behind on enchantment technology. They didn’t have any concept of how spatial enchantments worked and how to create them, just artifacts and remnants from the past. As the Residents talked through some enchantments with Kether, he was constantly astonished by the things they could do with just Mana.
They were still refining the process of using Concepts though, which was something the Realm was much better at.
No one could come up with a decent theory as to why they were behind other than that they just didn’t seem to have bothered or cared in the past.
They decided the best first target for them was the Earth Branch of the Ano family. They weren’t the easiest target, but they weren’t as likely as some of the other targets to aggressively hunt down the perpetrators. They were also currently in the midst of a minor dispute with the Water Branch which meant, they would likely assume they were the thieves.
Their vault was also one of the oldest and while it was considered very secure, it was secured almost entirely physically. With Felix’s Aether Tunnels and Spatial Translocation, along with the items the Wanderer’s Lab could make, they could easily circumvent most of the defenses.
They didn’t waste any time with the first heist and set out that very same day, since they had everything they needed.
The main compound of the Earth Branch was where they kept their personal vault and also one of the branches they had the most Residents inside of. It wasn’t a big stone block of a building like Felix expected from a branch called the Earth Branch but rather, it consisted of many towers with intricate supports and pillars holding up bridges that spanned across them.
There was a wall around the outside of the compound and walking up to the front door, they were let right in.
“This almost feel too easy.” Kether whispered with a loud and excited tone.
“They can get us in to the compound and give us the layout, they can’t unlock the safes in the vault for us.” Felix tried to adjust his expectations.
“Still.” He shook his head, “This is pretty great.”
From the wall, they walked across the grounds over to a specific tower they had mapped out as their entry point. It was close to the vault, but also commonly used enough that no one would look twice at them entering through there.
Then, Aela split off along with the Resident that had let them in and went off to meet a minor member of the branch. While she was there, they were acting as her guards and would break into and empty the vault.
Once Aela had been delivered to her meeting, the Resident returned and escorted them to a waiting room where they were supposed to wait for her to finish. It wasn’t the nearest waiting room, but it was slightly bigger than the nearest one so, it wasn’t entirely suspect that she led them there.
Inside the break room, Kether kept watch while Felix open an Aether Tunnel a very specific, measured distance through the west wall, three and a half meters from the south wall.
10 seconds later, Varex, Rel and Felix stepped through the Aether Tunnel and right into a vault room.
The room itself was just a large metal box. Within it, were a number of safes along all the walls. While the room itself wasn’t warded in any way, each of the safes were in multiple different ways. The contents were constantly weighed, their temperature was measured and control and there were light sensors throughout. All of them were enchantments though and relatively easy to disable.
Varex seemed slightly hesitant, as if unsure it would actually work, as he placed the item the Wanderer’s Lab had given him in the center of the room.
Then, he activated it and nodded to Rel.
She took one side of the room while Felix took the other. They weren’t exactly quiet but they had some time and Felix’s other Residents in the compound had made sure there wouldn’t be anyone near the walls adjacent the vault because even if they could block sound, there were also vibrations they couldn’t block.
One by one, Rel proceeded to blow open the safe doors with very controlled explosions before moving on to the next one. Felix did the same as best he could but he wasn’t nearly as capable as she was at controlled explosions. Instead, he used his Matter Control to manipulate the doors themselves.
He also pulled Nova out of his Soul Space and had her help him and she managed to open far more than he did.
The entire process took a total of ten minutes. Then, Felix moved from vault to vault and moved the contents of each one into his Soul Space using his tendrils.
Finally, he opened an Aether Tunnel, the exact opposite of the one they had used to enter, and they all stepped back into the room.
“You’re done?” Kether looked at them incredulously.
“Yup.” Varex nodded, “How much longer will the enchantment disabling device last?”
Felix shrugged, “A couple hours. I charged it just before we left to be sure.”
He nodded and took a seat.
“So… we just wait?” Rel looked around, in a similar amount of disbelief as Kether, “…and walk out?”
“Pretty much. Help yourself to the refreshments in the room. They are for us.”
She nodded slowly then took a seat while Kether began excitedly pacing across the room.
Aela’s meeting took a total of a couple hours during which Felix could tell Varex was getting progressively more nervous. Felix wasn’t nervous though because what he wasn’t telling them, was that his Mana Control let him reach into the vault, nearly a kilometer away, and so he was keeping the device charged the entire time.
The Resident that had escorted them to the room then led them back out where they met up with Aela and simply walked off the compound and back to The Wanderer’s Lab building.
There, Felix dumped the contents of his Soul Space onto the table so they could all search through the loot.
The building itself was warded to the point where it would be impossible to spy on them so, they didn’t have to worry or go all the way back to the cottage.
“Holy shit.” Kether dug his hands into the massive pile that mostly consisted of ros, “This is more ros than we’ve ever made in… on all of our other jobs combined.”
Rel giggled and held a few Emros in her fingers, seemingly checking if they were real or not.
“Any interest in the items?” Felix said picking up some kind of hat that was warded against something he couldn’t decipher.
Kether picked up a fold-able fan that was enchanted to push air and produce a melody as it did so and snorted, “Nah. I’m good with just the ros.”
Felix nodded and used his Matter Control to quickly split the pile into chunks. He pushed ten percent towards all of them then the other fifty to Arysha. She took that money into her own Soul Space, the result of another project of their’s using the Soul Forge.
“How long until the next one?” Kether said as he greedily shoveled ros into a bag.
“Not long. We’re going to play it off as retaliation and hit the Water Branch soon. Then, we’ll wait a little while and likely try to hit Mortalbane before hitting the other branches.” Felix answered.
Kether shrugged, “Sounds good to me.”
They nailed down the specifics of the job as the Residents got to work with the set up that needed to happen in the meantime.
While they did that, Felix went back to work at Cumulo Tech and brought Nova with him. It was a bit annoying at first telling her she couldn’t eat every single item in each of the vaults, but after a while Felix began to find it charming and somewhat humorous.
“Y’eve been doin a good job kid.” Woodruff sighed as he slouched down into his chair, “Yer more resilient en I am, in some cases.”
“Thanks. You didn’t just call me in here to tell me I’m doing a good job though. Is it about my familiar?”
He waved him off, “Nah. Don’t care bout that.” He took a long sip of some kind of crimson liquid that looked a bit like translucent blood, “Not sure if you know but, we get pretty much all our items from delvers.”
Felix shrugged, “I assumed. Wasn’t sure where else potentially dangerous, unknown items would come from.”
“Right.” Woodruff scratched at his chin, “Well, most the time we transport the items from the dungeons back here. It’s a dangerous job and in some cases, not feasible. So, we send Damned down there to figure out if we can safely transport them back here.”
“Okay…”
“Any interest in going down there and doing that?”
Normally yes but…
“No. I have things to do in the city and can’t be too far way right now. I appreciate you thinking about me though.”
Woodruff nodded, “Gotcha. No worries then.”
“See you tomorrow.” Felix waved politely then left and headed over to the Wanderer’s Lab building.
He was using the empty rooms in the building as a quiet place to catch up on things he had been neglecting for too long.
First, he started by harvesting all the ros he had collected up to that point. Everything he had made from his job at Cumulo Tech though, amounted to a miniscule fraction of his share of the Earth Branch job. Just one tenth of that job amounted to around 50 emros which was 10,000 biiros, which was 10,000 pheros, which was ten times more than he had made at Cumulo tech in total.
It was also, more Anima than he had ever had in one place at one time except, for the System Chunk. That was uncontrolled though, this was Anima he could take his time with.
He started by filling and compressing each and every aspect of his Soul. Then, he took a pass over every structure in his Soul, starting with the lattice barrier that surrounded and contained his Core Soular System. He kept the same overall structure but made the entire thing finer and denser. The lattice used more and smaller connections to fill the same volume and ultimately, it was much stronger.
Then, he expanded and filled out more planets within his Soular System as he still had so much Anima.
After that, he didn’t really have anything else to do with the rest of the Anima so, he turned his attention inside himself. First, he poked the Fractal Mana Spell Form within his Core Soul. It shifted slightly but was otherwise unresponsive to his every action. He had really been hoping he would get any kind of direction from it but there he was getting nothing.
Then, he banked as much Anima as he could within himself, just in case, and yet, he still had more.
The last thing he did, was begin to craft an Avatar.
From what he and his Residents had gathered, most people projected their Soul outwards and that was their Avatar. It was literally part of their Soul. Felix had found over the last epoch, that that seemed to be impossible for him. He could slightly shape the outer layers of his Soul to his body but in general, his Soul was rather rigid and unwilling to be projected.
So instead, he resolved himself to craft an Avatar, even if it was temporary and just for the Realm so he could participate in the Spirit Fights.
He ran out of Anima before he could finish it but even just the proof of concept, was much more promising than anything else he had tried thus far.
Finally, Felix began working on Spells again. He crafted and refined Concepts then imbued them in Spells but every time he did, he felt like he was missing something. The Spells were stronger but they weren’t nearly what Rel was capable of and they just felt lacking. Even if he were able to match Rel though, it wouldn’t be enough. Not if he wanted to fight the Dragon, even with a weapon to cast through, if he ever managed to find one that worked for him.
He kept working at it though between work as the Residents prepared the next job in the hopes that he would have some kind of breakthrough, anything to indicate that it was at all possible for him to kill The Dragon.