It was now over 20 years old when it made the link to a somewhat large universe. It was at least large enough to support more variety of life. Carbon based life. Less powerful in its raw form, easily disrupted, but for what it lacked in the singular in made up for with variety.

What it had discovered as soon as the link was opened between its home and the universe of life was a weird tentacle thing that floated and absorbed light moving between the floating rocks. Where the rocks became larger they slithered across its surface absorbing the lights. This universe was hundreds of thousands if not millions of times the size of its.

The small, barley inch across mini squids slithered throughout most of it. It could see the variation as it explored however. Each one had its own will acting upon the matter around it. No more was the space around it easily predicted. It would recoil when one of the squid made a decision to more, the unexpected direction and movement was something new. Its life had been filled by order and logic watching the macro scale movement and its predictable path. It found itself slowing to watch the small creatures as they moved unknowing or uncaring of his presence.

It found fascination from the small creatures, and before it had realised, years had passed and the creatures looked different from before. The ones now had longer tentacles than before on average, perhaps a shade greener in colour. With his perfect memory and sense of space he could see the half millimetre increase. The race members did not live long, only a handful of weeks and they reproduced often. There was nothing to stunt their population and soon the rocks grew thick with them. Slithering over every surface.

‘What are they’ The question stirred something in his mind, ‘what was it.’

It looked within itself and tried to see what it was, it saw the matter that made it up. ‘What it that, this and this, how does it work.’

It would name them, give them something to identify them, something to identify everything. Once it had done this it would perhaps be able to identify itself. It was made of these… things, as were to a lesser extend the small creatures.

He looked at the smallest division of anything that could possibly exist. There was a pain, it had never felt pain before. Its very nature of logical perfection reasoned that it should in its entirety define energy, potential, motion, potential motion, difference, singularity, excitement… the never-ending way in which energy moved and interacted with the world was being forced into its mind, its body. It ceased its search for everything. Its sensory organs stopped testing and documenting the way in which the universe reacted. It simply did not have the capacity to store the sensory input it was collecting.

It looked at the results of its searching so far, rolling and meshing the abstract data, rolling the concept around in its mind. This concept was then put into a single small thought that summarised the partial concept. It perhaps sounded something like ‘Potentia’ The potential for everything. Next it would name things made from specific arrangements of energy. It would build and catalogue a term for all that it could, incomplete as the definition that it created, in time it believed fulfilling its goal was possible.

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***

Chris left the luxurious Horse and Four in search of the academy grounds and to familiarise himself with the nearby surroundings, he planned on establishing a small reputation here. As they left the brick and wood of the high quality inn he for the first time saw the hustle and bustle of a thriving city from a ground perspective.

Standing at a couple of meters radius was some of his newly hired guards. They had been quickly trained up by Sebastian (Blackhand) and the new full plate armour they wore with black cloaks defined with red trims looked highly imposing. They had already learned some basic physical enhancement magic while on their previous occupation and did not need to learn any more to move easily in the armour. Chris would have liked six guards but only four could use the physical type magic so far.

As the group walked down the street people looked at the group, a young boy accompanied by a tall pale woman and surrounded by four heavily armed knights with brutally large weapons. Most decided some lord's son had come from the capital to play at being important for a change, and decided to give the entourage a wide berth.

Chris looked at some of the boys running around, as either messengers or other errand boys and felt a slight pang. He dismissed the emotion and kept his face neutral.

“Let's head for the academy to register first.”

“Yes my Lord, Tannith, Ferren take point” Captain Sebastian gave the orders in a practiced clipped manner and the two chosen men jumped to carry out the orders moving in formation to the front and leading the way towards the academy.

They passed bakery shops and clothes shops all geared toward the more expensive tastes as they made their way towards the academy. Chris now regretted his inability to taste any of the delicacies and was reminded of his inability to generate mana on his own. Was the upgrade in capacity really worth the inconvenience of having to consume blood to cast magic. Well there was the perk that undead had no life span, save for unnatural death. Admittedly there was a lot of unnatural death in the undead population. Perhaps he would have to find some magic to turn himself back.

They continued their walk onwards for the remaining distance to the academy entrance. The campus itself took up about 20 acres of land within the city, a large portion to be sure, but it was one of the main reasons the town had even grown into a city. The whole city had a population of about half a million people, relatively large as far as the kingdom went, certainly in the top 5 cities.

The building that served as the entrance past the towering 30 feet high was impressive. Mage cut blocks of stone so large they could only be lifted by magic created a towering building over 100 feet tall and sprawling to the sides.

Chris walked past the 10 guards standing at the door, they turned to regard him, but as he was obviously not riff raff they allowed him to enter unchecked.

The party ascended the steps.