Chronicles of the True Wizard

Chapter 197 - Book 14

He wanted to try and translate the book with the moving ink and, somewhat selfishly, thought he might get caught up in something else if he headed back to Inscripticae right away. So, he didn't.

Taking out a piece of parchment, Felix wrote down a number of random words and letters from memory and handed it to the librarian. He was hoping that choosing disjointed words from various sentences would be enough to keep the contents secret while still finding the language.

Pragmatically, he just didn't want to be seen asking about necromancy in case it was evil, forbidden or even just frowned upon. He also didn't have actually have any interest in necromancy beyond his natural curiosity to know everything.

A few moments passed before the librarian returned with a grim and judgmental expression on their face, "Not sure where you found a necromancy book but you should probably just sell it."

Felix frowned and feigned innocence, "It's a necromancy book?"

The librarian seemed to buy it, their judgmental expression quickly washing away and they just nodded, "Yeah. Necromancers are generally frowned upon so they use languages known only to them in order to communicate with each-other. I don't have a dictionary for you so, you probably won't be able to translate it easily. I was only able to recognize it because we know some words here and there. It's a constant battle, trying to decipher the languages as they create them."

Felix nodded, "Thanks. Do you happen to have more information on necromancers, their towers, tools and so on? I think I might have found an abandoned necromancer's abode and I want to identify everything so I know what to do with it."

The librarian nodded and seemed to accept his explanation then hurried off and retrieved a number of books for Felix, "We also have a few librarians with knowledge specializations covering necromancers if you'd like. You could also just ask the Guild of Answers if you want us to submit a specific question for you."

Felix nodded, "Thanks. Could you return all these now? I already scanned them. Also, if there's a necromancy specialist here now, could you send them over?"

The librarian nodded, "Of course."

A few moments later, the stack of books on his table was gone and a completely different librarian was sitting across from Felix.

Felix waited for the librarian to sit down before pestering them, "So, I found an old necromancer's house on my last job."

"Ah, and you wish to identify things you have found within?"

Felix nodded, "First, there was a big battery in the basement. I thought it was just a mana battery but there was a very complicated ward in place, facing the battery."

"Ah, it sounds like you came across a necromancer's battery. It is a good thing you recognized the wards. If you had gotten near it without the wards, it likely would have driven you insane, depending on how full it is."

Felix frowned, "What is it?"

"You seem to be familiar with mana batteries, are you familiar with soul gems?"

Felix nodded, "I am."

"Good. A necromancer's battery combines the two except it holds more than a single soul."

"So why would it have driven me insane?"

"Instead of sanitizing and humanely binding a soul to a crystal, as soul gems are, necromancers often utilize complete souls in their rituals. It is not necessary but it simplifies the process greatly. This necessitates a store of some kind and so they will often sacrifice creatures in a ritual that binds their souls directly into the battery. Once there are multiple souls in the battery, they are locked in an eternal battle of wills. Produced from this battle are what are colloquially referred to as, The Wails of the Damned."

Felix nodded to convey he understood, despite the fact that he quickly dismissed everything they had said, then moved on, "What about necromancer languages? I found a book written in some language I can't read. I had the last librarian identify it based on," Felix placed the parchment he had written some of the words onto between them, "these words."

The librarian looked down and nodded, "Yes. The languages change over time as they are deciphered but they are intended to allow necromancers to keep their secrets which is why The System will not translate it for you."

"I guess that would defeat the purpose of creating a secret language."

"Precisely. I would very much like to take a look at this book if you have it with you?"

"I don't have it on me."

"I see. The language is most often used for when necromancer's communicate with each-other. For educational purposes, academic texts, re

Once he was certain, he exited his Soul Space and quickly replaced the portal spell form mold he had created with the new, simpler spell form.

With that done, he pulled his charm off his body and started examining it. He was approaching C grade fairly quickly and he really did not want to lose access to 40 million mana. He was planning on looking into separating his mana capacity from his Intelligence but until he did, he was hoping to at least learn something from the charm.

It only took him a half hour to fully map out the charm and he did in fact learn something. The channels within the charm and the way it connected the batteries was completely novel to Felix. It formed a network that balanced the draw from the batteries naturally, normalized them a little then coalesced all the mana before normalizing it all one last time. All of this was done without nodes.

The channels themselves simply formed almost a fractal or a vortex and somehow, this pattern was what did all the work.

The geometric pattern the channels formed inspired Felix to start thinking of other patterns that would have similar functions without the need for nodes at all. It was a system without significant failure points. It was simply a network of channels, no nodes necessary and it seemed to accomplish its goal perfectly.

With the patterns stored away in his head for later, Felix finally turned to the item he had been procrastinating on, the computer.

He had reached his goal size in terms of physical size and number of transistors. He even spent an entire day verifying it again but found nothing. It was finished and theoretically, functional. He had been putting it off because it was daunting and dangerous, what he needed to do next.

With the other two items on his todo list, he had really just been pushing off the computer. While he needed to do them eventually, the computer was always in the back of his mind, not literally just yet, but the task before him was ever present.

Any insight on how I might go about this, from your memories or any of the books I've scanned?

Sorry, I've got nothing. You're just going to have to go for it. I've read your thoughts, your best idea, it seems like it could work.

Felix sighed, Yeah. It would be nice to know a good healer that could undo what I'm about to do if something goes wrong.

It would be nice to have a backup body as well, unfortunately, I don't know if anyone but you could undo what you are about to do.

Yeah. That is both reassuring that this is the right path and incredibly concerning that I might be ruining myself.

Sorry.

Alright, nothing left but to go for it.

Felix headed into his Pocket Home because he knew no one would be able to fix him if he screwed up and if he died, he didn't want anyone to be able to find him. He had Nova sit outside and wait for him then sat down near the sapling, that was a couple inches taller than it had been, and pulled out the computer he had been working on.

It was now the exact size of his brain, which was the goal, but not because he intended on replacing his brain but rather, he wanted to attach the computer to it. Fusing them together into one singular entity.

He started by vey carefully shifting the computer in the fourth dimension then moving it into his mana pool. His mana pool was just a pocket of mana that sat alongside his body, just shifted slightly. Placing the computer right where his brain would be, he carefully fused his soul to the anima used to create the computer.

The last step of the process was the part where irreversible things could start to happen.

Felix made sure the computer was pressed right up against his brain, perfectly overlapping it in the fourth dimension, then focused in on the anima that now connected them. He carefully honed in on the experiences within the anima.

The experience of his brain, how it functioned, the experience of the computer, how to build it, how to program it, how to connect it, how to read from it and write to it. Lastly, he mixed in some of the experiences and feelings from his own core soul. The desire to grow stronger, to be smarter, to think things through, the feeling of having perfect memory and the satisfaction of using it, the will to live and finally, the desire to control.

There was no big explosion or significant pain. In fact, as he finished, he wasn't even sure anything was happening. Theoretically his brain and the computer would slowly connect themselves together and become more integrated over time but this was based on a lot of guessing and assumptions. There was no research or previous tests or even experiments he could run to verify anything.

It was impossible to do what he was doing for anyone but him. He could have created another computer and attached it to a monkey but his soul was the only one that had the mana senses and control to correctly read and write from the computer. Trying to fuse that to a monkey would likely also wipe out its soul which was not ideal. Even bonded creatures like Nova ran the same risk because he would need to put so much of his soul at such a high density, both he and Grim were certain it would have obliterated her.

So all that was left was for Felix to wait. Wait for something to happen, any sign to show that it had worked. He took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself then got up and walked out of his Pocket Home.

He looked around the storage room then felt Nova outside in the workshop in an out of character act of defiance. Felix walked out and looked for her, finding her in the design room with Aldahn.

Watching from the door, Felix saw Aldahn playing with Nova. Much like a real pet, he had a small chunk of some material in his hands and he was playing keep away with Nova in her scaled kitten form.

He noticed and acknowledged Felix as he entered with a slight nod then turned back to Nova.

Considering it was the middle of the night, Felix felt comfortable asking Aldahn something he had been wondering about for a while.

"Hey Aldahn, could I ask you something in your office?"

Aldahn looked at Felix then nodded and shrugged, "Sure."

He tossed the chunk of material into the air and Nova immediately caught it then followed them over to his office.

Once inside, Felix waited until the door was closed then he pulled out Grim from his soul space, for the first time in a very long time.

"What do you see when I show you this?" Felix held Grim out in front of him.

"Oh, it's Dark Magic."

Felix frowned, "Dark Magic?"

Aldahn immediately shook his head, "No not Dark Magic, Dark Magic."

Felix's face contorted even further, "What? Wait… What? You just said the same thing twice."

Aldahn sighed in understanding, "Damn, stupid System translation. Ancient Magic, Forgotten Magic, Hidden Magic, Magic hidden in the shadows of time? Not Evil Magic or anything like that."

Felix nodded, "Ancient Magic sounds the most accurate to me."

Aldahn cocked his head back and forth indicating sort of, "Most people's understanding of the magic is hidden, secret, forgotten, lost in the dark, hard to find. Which why we call it Dark Magic. I suspect your language doesn't have quite the right words so The System translates to the closest word it can find that conveys a similar meaning."

"I guess Dark Magic makes some sense with context."

"See, you just used a different word for me right there, but I suspect you said the same thing with different intent just now, right?"

Felix nodded, "That is… frustrating."

Aldahn chuckled, "One of the biggest flaws of The System we've come across. It wipes out the need for languages but the translation is imperfect. Any translation is just flawed by nature. No two languages will ever map one to one. So, something is always lost."

"It could just convey the meaning directly into our heads though, right?"

"It could. The System used to avoid that more though and it's been translating everything… since the start I think. Obviously it doesn't translate codes or languages where the intention is to hide meaning but…"

"What would Evil Magic be then?"

Aldahn shrugged, "There is no inherently Evil Magic. Everyone understands that… Other than a few particularly zealous gods… Necromancy is naturally a little worrisome but it's not inherently Evil. You can be a necromancer and do it humanely without causing pain or sacrificing anyone. It's taboo, but not evil. No one is going to hunt you down and kill you just because you chose the class and practice it. Well… except some gods, but living in Telviras and other neutral locations, you'd be perfectly safe."

Felix nodded, "Yeah, just talked to a necromancy expert at the library in fact."

Aldahn's eyes rolled upwards, deep in thought, "I guess… depending on your morals, you could consider blood rituals inherently evil but… I don't know that that's a specific kind of magic more like… a technique…"

"I see. But this book, can you identify it? Am I at risk of being attacked for having it? Am I at risk of having it stolen?"

Aldahn shrugged, "I just see Tome. Maybe if someone had more knowledge of what it was they'd want to steal it? I would be… surprised if anyone was that dedicated to researching it that they would do that. More likely they would offer you increasingly exorbitant offers until you lent it to them."

Felix let go of Grim and he floated in the air in between them. Grim opened himself up and faced Aldahn then clearly wrote something Felix couldn't see on his pages.

Aldahn's eyes widened, "Oh, it's sapio-sentient… That's… You're probably still fine… I'd worry more about the cursed familiar honestly."

Felix winced, "Oh… that bad?"

"Well… no one's gonna want to steal it but, people might avoid you or decide Nova was better off dead."

"Gotcha, thanks. Last question, a few times now I've wanted to cast certain spells but before I even get them off, something happens and… it's like they go off instantly before I have the chance to actually cast them myself… does makes sense?"

Aldahn shrugged, "I think so? I'm not a caster but… I've never heard of anything like that. I don't know. Maybe The System just really likes you? It's not unheard of for The System to favor certain individuals. It's very rare though."

Felix frowned, "Yeah maybe."

"Oh by the way, I was looking for you. That's how I found Nova chilling in the storage closet and… never mind. We've got a new job."

Felix nodded then let his confusion leak onto his face, "Ok, so…"

"It's the biggest job I've ever been contracted to do, as an adventurer or an enchanter. It's gonna be an all hands on deck kind of situation. Well, not all hands. I already know Krinitor is too busy right now, because he just got a huge job from a long time client himself but, we'll definitely need everyone else."

Felix nodded appreciatively, "That big?"

Aldahn nodded slowly, "Yeah. We're gonna meet with the client together in just over 2 dekads. I'm going to be letting everyone know as I find them so no one makes other commitments."

"Any idea how long it will take?"

"No idea. All I know is how much they're ready to pay for it and a general idea of the level of enchantment they need. They only gave me a basic idea and I already know… it's gonna be a lot of work."

"Which is…"

"Their budget is somewhere between 1S and 1SS depending on how much we need. Enchantment has to be at least A grade Legendary, ideally higher."

Felix scoffed, "No offense but… Is Inscripticae really the best shop to be handling this job?"

Aldahn chuckled, "That's what I said but they specifically wanted us. Something about a personal recommendation."

This sounds… something is up…

"Alright. I'll be here… by the way, I should let you know, I have somewhere I have to be in 111 days. I'll let you know my plans closer to the date." Felix offered a slightly guilty smile.

"That shouldn't be an issue with this job. Worst case you can leave early. Thanks for letting me know."

Felix nodded and exited the office, Grim floating behind him and Nova riding on Grim's cover.

Alright so I've got just over 2 dekads to kill.

That you do.

I think first things first, I should clean out my Soul Space.

Grim chuckled in Felix's mind, Good call. It is getting kind of messy in there.

Felix just scoffed because his soul space was barely 5% full.

He touched and stowed Grim in his Soul Space then shoved Nova into his robes and flew off to Luther's.

He found the giant toad sitting behind the counter in his shop, seemingly discussing something with tiny fairy like creatures. As Felix entered, the fairies vanished leaving just the two of them in the shop, alone.

"Ah, the new kid in Shade's Wrath. What can I get for you today?"

"Actually, I was hoping you would buy some things from me."

Luther's eyes waggled, "Oh, is that so?"

First, Felix offered Luther the books he had gotten in the tutorial as well as his old E grade quills. Luther offered him a meager amount for all of them, but the toad was clearly not impressed. Felix had expected that and honestly, he was just hoping to get anything for any of it. It had no value to him anymore so he would just throw any of it away if Luther didn't buy it from him.

After that there was the random crap he had picked up in the world event that he didn't need or have a use for.

The bigger ticket items were his old charm, experiment 12, the plate armor from Erolan's experiment storage room, and something he hadn't expected to be worth much.

"I can offer 10 B for the charm. This suit of armor is… interesting."

"I couldn't actually identify it, can you?"

Luther answered by sharing the identification with him.

[D - Cursed] Bonded Plate

[Armor][Cursed]

This plate armor creates an unbreakable bond with its wearer. Once equipped, the armor will begin to gradually tighten until it eventually sinks beneath their flesh and merges with it. It will continue to offer the wearer the full protection of plate armor but will remain forever bonded to them.

In order to be removed once fully bonded, the armor must be removed surgically with high grade cutting equipment.

This armor does not grow in protection and will only ever offer A [D - Legendary] level Plate Armor protection. It does not however, count as equipped armor once fully bonded for the effects of skills and classes that have such a requirement.

"Wait a second, that's not necessarily a bad thing."

Luther nodded, "Great stuff for some pugilist or barbarian classes that require no armor to function."

Felix winced, "But it has to be surgically removed once they get to C grade…"

"Not necessarily," Luther croaked, "It is possible, in some rare circumstances, that the armor will count as a part of the wearer's body and evolve along with their race. Assuming they are eligible for a [C - Legendary] or above race."

So considering I won't ever have to upgrade my race again, not really usable for me.

Grim shrugged, You could probably remove it without surgery though.

Yeah… I'm already too close to C grade to worry about this I think.

Agreed.

Felix nodded, "So, to the right buyer, it would be worth a lot is what you're saying?"

Luther laughed which was a deep and rumbling croak, "Yes. I believe I could find a buyer for this and I'd be willing to offer… 0.25 A?"

Holy shit.

"Wow. You also said this was valuable?"

Luther nodded as he looked at the book Felix was pointing to.

[E - Rare] Eramith & Edelis: Enchanting Basics

A book written by a collection of master enchanters detailing the basics of enchanting intended for their personal apprentices. This version was later edited for general consumption by The Edelis Enchanting Department of The Eramith Academy.

Luther shrugged his massive front legs, "It's decently rare to find Eramith anything outside of the school itself. I could probably offer you…"

Before he even said a number, Felix's instincts tickled at him. His soul was aware of something he wasn't and it was telling him Luther was hiding something. It threw him off a little and he had to shut his eyes to process it.

"100 B?"

Felix finally managed to come back to his senses and he just nodded, "Actually, I'll keep the book." With his finger still on the book's cover, he stowed it in his Soul Space.

Luther didn't seem happy about that but he didn't say anything on the matter.

"So, how about 0.35 A for everything here?"

Luther laughed raucously for a minute straight before collecting himself, "No. No chance in hell I'm paying that much for this junk. I'll give you 0.25 A and I won't charge you the cleaning fee for taking everything else."

Felix frowned, "Oh come on, you get to sell both of these yourself, you'll find the right buyer and you'll make a handsome profit. 0.3 A?"

Luther groaned which was a deep, rumbling sound, "Fine."

A transfer screen appeared and Felix accepted, receiving 300k B.

He bid Luther farewell and headed back to Inscripticae with a much cleaner Soul Space.

He immediately flew into the storage closet and entered his Pocket Home. Inside, he briefly checked on the sapling that seemed to be doing fine then dropped off Nova and Grim and flew up to the top of his tower.

There had been an option in the upgrade podium that he had seen a while back but hadn't felt the need to bother with until now. He also had plenty of mana accumulated in the mana engine and battery below so he had more than enough to pay for it.

[D - Epic] Wizard's Tower

Claim Land

Claim the land surrounding the tower as a part of the tower itself. This will add all the land and liquid in the surrounding area, as it is enclosed, and that land will be considered a part of the tower itself. Upgrades and modifications to the land and liquid claimed will appear in this management console.

Requirements:

10B Mana [21.5B | 215%]

1 B Credit (Consumed) [511,908 | 51,190,800%]

Would you like to claim the surrounding land now?

Yes.

No.

Yes.

The process was completely uneventful but looking through the console, Felix saw exactly what he had been hoping for. Before he touched anything else though, he darted out of the tower, saw Grim and Nova play sparring, and flew into the Necromancer's tower.

He immediately headed straight into the dungeon where he looked down at the necromancer's battery. Before touching it, he had Grim and Nova both hurry over so he could stick them in his soul space then, he broke the wards around the battery.

As far as he could tell, nothing had happened. There were no wails of the damned souls or anything. He lifted the glass and hopped down then reached forwards and touched the battery, sticking it in his Soul Space.

There was a slight risk that it affected Nova and Grim but, considering how quickly his Soul Space obliterated every other soul he had stowed, he was more worried about them being nearby when he undid the wards.

With the transfer complete, he let the two of them out and searched the rest of the tower. He found a few interesting enchantment nodes that he memorized but otherwise, he was confident there was nothing else he wanted in there.

Finally, he headed back into his own tower and up to the management console where he was ready to spend exorbitant amounts of mana.

He started by completely scrapping the necromancer's tower. All the materials went into a material cache in the console and would be used in future to lessen the cost of other upgrades. After that, he finally flattened the entire island so it wasn't on a slant anymore from when he had ripped it out of the side of a dormant volcano.

He then had the entirety of the island reinforced with some of the stone from the necromancer's tower so there was no chance it would ever fall apart. He also added soil and D grade grass to the entire surface of the island as well as moved some of the mana liquid suffused ponds.

It was also slightly entertaining to Felix, to look out the window and see everything move in real time, especially watching Nova freak out and try to figure out what was happening.

Now that the layout of the island was more balanced and the island itself more stable, he looked inwards and started examining the battery in his Soul Space.

The gem itself was massive, but only physically. In terms of mana capacity, Felix wasn't sure if there was more than a few million points of mana. Considering its size, he had expected far more. There were however, thousands of souls.

He did not have an exact number and they were a wide variety of different creatures of different levels but, it was a lot of anima.

As he tried to decide what to actually do with all of it, his mind wandered towards his current Soul Reap skill, or rather what it was currently doing for him.

Currently, it was automating the process of stripping souls down and pulling out anything that didn't have any experiences or instincts. From there, he took out anything left of the second layer from the soul and fused that into his own.

As he thought about it more though, he realized what he was currently doing probably wasn't the most efficient. It was efficient in terms of netting him raw stats, but it wasn't efficiently using all of the soul or using it where it was needed most.

He decided he was going to simply harvest all of the souls. It was better than being sealed in the battery and eternally tortured, but he was going to have to change his harvesting method first.

Felix carefully removed a single soul from the battery and moved it directly into The Soul Ring. From there, he started the process he wanted most souls to go through, he dragged them along the outside of his own soul where it was completely obliterated. Then, it was compressed as much as possible and simply fused into his soul anywhere.

He currently had two layers he could add to, the second and third. The second controlled his body and acted as the link between his body and soul, it was responsible for his physical stats. The third was the layer suffusing his body.

It didn't matter which got more anima added to them because both of them resulted in his soul being stronger and his stats going up. It would also make it so that the stats of the soul he was harvesting no longer mattered, all that mattered was its relative size or strength.

While this allowed him to use the entire soul, it also meant there was nothing left for his Persona's soul. He wasn't really concerned about that for the moment though and simply drew as many souls as he could into the ring and reactivated his Soul Reap skill.

Once it was done processing those souls, he moved the rest in and moved his attention over to the battery that was left behind.

The battery's capacity was oddly small, considering it was a gemstone as wide as Felix's shoulders. Identifying it, it had less than some of the batteries he had bought. His assumption was that it had something to do with having it used for souls as well as mana but he couldn't be sure.

Either way, he moved it into the basement of his own tower and connected it in parallel to the other battery he was already using as a buffer. If he ever spent more time figuring out how to make and diagnose batteries he decided he would look into remaking this gemstone but until then, it would act as a passable buffer.

Heading out onto the now grassy fields of the island around his tower, Felix found Nova and Grim flying around. They both noticed him immediately and flew over when Felix requested Grim's presence in his Memory Palace.

Want to try bringing Nova in here as well?

Felix frowned, Is that possible?

Why wouldn't it be? I can do it and we have basically the same bond, right?

Ok, what do we do?

We just have to explain to Nova how it works. I can communicate with her myself so let me give it a try.

Felix nodded and waited while a number of expressions passed over Nova's kitten visage. Eventually though, she closed her eyes, laid down and Felix felt a rush of emotions from her. He quickly moved himself into his Memory Palace and found Nova running around and jumping between shelves.

She ran down the aisles and into the distance then reappeared behind them as the library looped and they were in the center area. She stopped, looked at them in confusion then ran down the aisle again, not quite understanding the non-Euclidean geometry.

After a few minutes of her confusion growing, Felix caught her and dragged her over to his Soul Garden. All he had to do was hold on and will them both to go there and it happened.

The Soul Garden was much easier for her to understand and she jumped around and tried to bite things, but didn't so much as scratch anything because Felix didn't wish her to. He did let her splash around in the river and pond though.

He and Grim meanwhile, headed back to the library where together, they sorted through the Necromancer and Lich's books.

While none of the books had had information on the battery from their skimming them, they had plenty of information on spells and rituals they had bought, created and performed.

Starting with the Fire Storm, while Felix thought the spell was cool, it was far too slow and clunky for his style of combat. It definitely would have been a devastating spell in a lot of circumstances but it took far too much concentration and time to actually cast. It did however, consist of many spell nodes Felix had never seen before.

He spent some time dissecting the spell into it's constituent parts and analyzing the channels, nodes and patterns. Why certain nodes were grouped with others and why the channels were organized the way they were. The biggest benefit were the Fire and Force nodes whose efficiency curves made them far more suitable for higher mana cost spells allowing Felix's spells to scale much better.

They also found a number of other spells but unfortunately, Felix was still lacking certain nodes he would have wanted. The other spells were interesting but a lot of them were either useless to him because they were redundant, worse than what he already had or far too clunky to be useful.

Once Felix had gotten everything he wanted from the spells, they briefly sorted through the rest of the information, some of which was useful. There was solid information on rituals, how to cast them and how they worked which was new to Felix but also not something he ever really planned to use. At least, he didn't have any use case for rituals yet. Most of what rituals did, he could do simply by casting the spell in the air. His portal mold for example seemed to technically be a ritual.

With all the information sorted through, Felix turned his attention to his mind. Feeling out his own brain as well as the connected computer, he couldn't actually tell if anything had happened. His stats hadn't changed at all and he couldn't find any effects so he assumed it would just take more time for his brain to rewire itself a little more.

In order to accelerate the process, Felix looked towards his Persona body and started picking and choosing the best modifications to move over to his own body. He figured some of them were already very stable with little to no downside and moving them over, his brain would be forced to rewire itself a little. In doing so, he was hoping he could accelerate the process of it integrating itself with the computer and having the two wire themselves together.

He started with the eyes which didn't take nearly as long as it had on his Persona's body because he had already experimented and designed them. They also had the largest effect compared to everything else. After that he transitioned the rest of his senses, ears, nose and tongue. They were all small increases overall but with his higher perception on his real body, he felt like he noticed them more. It was entirely possible though that was just because it was such a stark transition.

After that he also transitioned the bones and nails. The nails were a very low impact adjustment that would just make him less likely to have them break or be ripped off in the future. They also had very low risk if something went wrong and they seemed perfectly stable on his Persona's body.

The bones were a little more experimental with more risk but they were also completely stable as far as he could tell. They carried higher risk but not enough that he was going to avoid them.

The skin and muscle modifications he had made to his Persona did have issues. The skin had had problems with being too solid and restricting movements while the muscles were too inefficient to be useful. They also carried a high risk and so Felix dismissed them for the time being and didn't apply them to his real body.

He was happy his Persona was so useful as a testing ground in case he made a terrible mistake that was difficult to reverse. It gave his Persona value and lately, he'd started to feel an aversion to using his Persona. Ever since he suffused his real body with his own soul, it's felt so much more comfortable and correct to him.

Switching to a different body just felt wrong.

It was instinctual too, not just a hormonal feeling in his body. His soul itself was more fond of his real body and it resulted in him feeling more comfortable overall. Now, in his Persona, his soul felt like it was being shoved into an uncomfortable suit.

He suspected he could mitigate the feeling by modifying his Persona's soul and simply restructuring it a little. If he could make the innermost layer the one that suffused the body and affinized the anima to his own soul as much as possible, the feeling would likely disappear. He just didn't feel the motivation at the moment to do so.

He had also considered making his Persona identical to his real body so it would be a more effective training ground but he decided against doing so. The differences between their bodies actually helped him find issues and allowed him to have 2.5 times the strength at will.

The other huge benefit, which he was hoping would mean more in the future, was that he could enter competitions and generally do things that drew a lot of attention. All of that attention would then be on his Persona and he wouldn't feel conflicted between trying to win the competition and avoiding standing out.

For the time being, he left his Persona be and saw some nice improvements to his raw stats. His Perception, Vitality and Endurance had increased by about 5000, 2500 and 1500 respectively. As he looked over his sheet, he also admired just how many stats he had gained from killing the Lich and harvesting the Necromancer's Battery.

Though they had been low grade souls, there had been a lot of them. It seemed that harvesting souls in general was doing wonders for his Dexterity and Vitality specifically. He understood why, because they were based on control over his body and willpower, both of which were heavily based on the soul. It was still a shock though to see just how much those souls had done for him.

Name:Felix KadeFREE0Innate:Ascendant Prodigy: Mana (Wizard)STR31440Class:[D - Legendary] Reaper (Lvl 778)DEX116852Race:[D - Unique] Wanderer (Lvl 735)AGI40143Profession:[D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (Lvl 693)PER72968Health:757,770 / 757,770VIT75777Mana:51,668,030 / 51,668,030INT106073Energy:2,148,880 / 2,148,880END53722

Damn, my Intelligence actually got surpassed. Holy shit.

On another note, you are finally ahead of the curve on your stats. At least compared to the other class and races you were offered.

Felix did some quick math, By a lot too, right?

Sort of? You gained a lot from harvesting and it's helping make up for your race where the increases haven't quite matched the Infant Lich race alone.

Maybe it's just because I suffused my body and now my soul is influencing my logical processes, but I couldn't imagine being a body hopping Lich at this point. I like my body a lot. Hopefully I can find more modifications in the future to at least help bridge the gap.

Grim shrugged, I may be wrong, but I think in theory, you'll end up in the same place. The most powerful body a Lich can possess is limited by what they can find. I'm sure at some point, they would have to start engineering themselves a body as well.

Maybe. That would mean they are stronger early on but then stall for a while until they spike once again much later.

Yeah, front loaded vs exponential growth.

Now that he had applied the modifications he wanted to his body, Felix took a quick look at adding mana channels to his body and fueling it with mana where he could. Unfortunately, he immediately ran into a huge setback he wasn't expecting.

His body and his Persona's were largely the same in terms of cell internals and he had tested the attunements to buff his Persona before the modifications. Despite that, the attunements behaved very weirdly in Felix's actual body.

Instead of buffing his Agility in his Persona, the very same attunement caused his cells to freak out in a sense. He had no idea what was happening and even examining them with his new found control over them, he couldn't figure it out. He tried a variety of other attunements too but they all had similar results. His cells just acted strangely like they were seizing and hitching in their normal functions.

Until he had a better idea of what was happening and a better way to diagnose things, Felix decided to put off mana channels.

Lastly, he wanted to try and figure out the weird casting that had happened with Damoth, the Lich and during his matter control practice.

He couldn't really simulate a battle that intense again but what he could do was get frustrated at pebbles while he tried to improve his matter control. His training then also had the side benefit of increasing his matter control, hopefully.

Felix hadn't actually gotten anywhere with matter control at all yet.

As he focused on various pebbles, he decided to lay them out in a circle around him and enter the first level of his meditation. The same meditation he had first entered when first trying to open the Arcane rarity Mana Control skill cube.

His senses blanked and Felix felt himself in an empty void with just the stones around him. To start, he mostly focused on feeling the pebbles themselves. Feeling their shape, their distance, the differences between them. He could also feel there was more to be felt but he wasn't there yet, he couldn't focus in enough to grasp whatever it was.

He was still feeling blobs, amorphous objects and undefined shapes but those blobs were getting every slightly smaller and more refined.

Unfortunately, it was nothing like when he learned to sense and control mana. Not only had that felt natural and comfortable but it was also familiar and fast. It was like he had done it for his entire life and he was just remembering how.

Now, it was truly like he was learning something new. Like he was working out and pushing for progress at something. It wasn't like when he started working out though, with significant progress being made early on. With this, it was like he was already at the wall. Like he had already passed the point of diminishing returns.

Is this just the limit of what I can do now?

It's based on how much Nova's soul seed has integrated with yours. How much stronger she's gotten since you integrated it.

Right. Considering how much I've already messed with my own soul, couldn't I manually… push that along a little?

I don't know. I don't know if anyone is actually that impatient to have tried that. Actually, no I'm sure someone has tried.

Might as well give it a shot, right?

First, before Felix did anything, he juggled some mana in the air and felt out his soul. He was trying to pinpoint the feeling within his soul, or find the location in his soul that was giving him the level of mana control he had. It took him a few hours and he had to strain himself but he finally managed to isolate the sensation and found it came from almost everywhere within his soul.

Switching over to his matter senses, he strained them as much as possible then focused in on his soul and immediately realized it was almost the same. He was satisfied with that answer though because he was mostly wondering about how souls functioned. They seemed to be wholly engaged in the action rather than segmented into functions.

Focusing in on his soul bond with Nova, Felix followed and narrowed down the specific location of the bond. It was much harder than he thought it would be because when he felt Nova's emotions, they poured into his soul. Finding where they where coming from was hard when that pour was perfectly uniform and instantaneous.

What helped was isolating how and where the communication between them happened. When they conversed in intents and feelings, he seemed to naturally push the intent or feeling into the soul seed itself.

Now that he had found it, Felix spent time analyzing it. He strained his matter senses once again and found that the seed didn't actually do any of the controlling itself. In fact, the seed felt more like a piece of Nova's soul that was slowly growing and blending itself into his own soul, almost like very slow dye.

Grim's was the same but he wasn't really getting stronger so it hadn't really changed in size or integrated itself much.

Following from the source though, Felix realized that while Nova's soul seed was still distinct, a miniscule portion of it had leaked into the rest of his soul. It had integrated itself somewhat, though the nature of Felix's soul had cleansed the majority of that. He suspected that had it not, he would be mirroring her emotions. He had no idea how or why it was able to distinguish between the emotions, the connection and the matter control but he was very happy it was happening.

The best he could do for the time being though, was to hone in on the experience he found in Nova's soul seed and very lightly in his own soul and try to amplify it. He didn't get far but returning to his body, he had made progress.

He could now see the shapes of the pebbles as if they were drawings. Nothing precise, but slightly smoothed outlines appeared all around him. It wasn't nearly enough to read a book through a wall or even determine any material properties, but it was noticeably better.

Unfortunately, Felix was pretty certain he would just have to wait while Nova got stronger and their soul seed grew. He couldn't think of anything else he could do right now in that department.

Switching back over to trying to move the stones, he got nowhere. Just like last time. Despite his manual improvement of his matter senses and likely control if he had any, he couldn't move the rocks at all.

His alternate goal of figuring out the weird instant casts also wasn't really getting anywhere either. In his meditation, he didn't grow frustrated, he was entirely calm and focused. He was trying to reproduce the effect under different circumstances because he didn't want to have to get frustrated to make it happen. It was also difficult to pay attention to what was happening when he was frustrated.

Unfortunately, it seemed like that would be necessary and he didn't see any good way of forcing himself to feel frustrated so he gave up for now. He did decide he would start paying as much attention as possible in the future so he had some direction to figure out what was happening. He was starting to think it may have been The System or something but he really hated that explanation so he avoided it for the time being.

With just over a dekad left until the client meeting, Felix decided to sit down and train. He also briefly dove into the elixirs and potions Zufaris had gotten him but unfortunately, unlike the poisons, these were almost entirely System Fuckery. The ones that weren't, he had already replicated and they had little to no effect on him at all.

He was also waiting to look at his mana pool and figure out why it was tied to his Intelligence until after the mana computer he had created was fully functional. He was expecting it to increase his Intelligence dramatically and so he had memorized or effectively snapshotted the feeling of his current mana in a series of single use batteries as well as his memories and soul experiences.

As soon as the computer increased his Intelligence and mana capacity, he could then compare those to reality and hopefully be able to find the difference. That didn't help him now though so he started working on his mana control and overall focus.

He lifted small weights with his mana control, cast spells as fast as he could, stretched his casting range and even practiced his aim.

Just to switch things up a little, he also spent a couple days training until he could quickly use the ambient mana to cast a spell. It wasn't really useful unless his mana pool was corrupted or something because he regenerated mana so quickly and it required at least twice the focus if not more. It wasn't like he could cast massive spells either, he was still restricted by the amount of aether directly around him.

He turned it into a game though, playing with Grim but more often Nova. Casting spells and sparring then taking time to heal. They cast spells at each-other, knocked rocks off a ledge, cast spells around corners, played spell tag and anything he could come up with to keep practicing and occupy Nova.

By the time the client meeting rolled around, he hadn't actually increased the number of spells he could cast at once, he was still stuck at 15 levels. He had increased his mana control range though all the way to about 10 meters. Right at the edge, though possible, he did need more focus to cast spells.

His aim was still as good as it needed to be, no issues he could see and his casting speed possibly improved negligibly but he wasn't entirely sure.

Unfortunately, he hadn't had any massive jumps in Intelligence, the stat or his noticeable processing speed. Either the computer needed more time or something was wrong. Felix was erring on the former though so he let it be for the time being.

Either way, he was happy with the time he had spent and felt satisfied overall when he hopped out of his Pocket Home and back into the workshop of Inscripticae. Nova hopped out as well and Felix made sure to stow Grim in his Soul Space as they left the storage room. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .