The last recruitnt he had scheduled was the one he was the most excited for, at least at the mont.
Earlier on, he was more excited for the others because those were the recruitnts he was planning on making the most progress in. Now that he had done that, accomplished just about everything he had hoped to, his priorities had shifted. He still had so things to work out, but Rhonan's was where he would put all of his progress, to the test.
On the day of, Felix walked and flew towards the portal room and joined the single biggest collection of students from Eramith he had ever seen. Luckily, all of them were heading to the sa place and the portal was just left open so they all simply walked through. He wasn't so excited that he needed to be right there when it opened, but rather he genuinely believed every minute counted.
Walking along at a steady pace, the line moved through the building until finally Felix caught sight of the room itself and a few people standing outside of it. One of which, was lody.
She saw him about the sa ti he saw her and she smiled then skipped over to join him in the line. No one really minded her cutting in either because of who she was or because of how fast the line was moving.
"Hey. You changed your hair. I kind of liked the reddish orange ss."
Oh whoops. Forgot to regrow that.
"Changed my head actually. Just forgot, I'll regrow it."
She cocked her head and stared at him for a mont then snorted, "How have your recruitnts been so far?"
"Great, actually. Better than I expected in many ways."
She nodded, "You look… or rather feel different."
Felix smirked, "Wait till you feel Peace."
She smirked but didn't ask, figuring she would find out eventually anyways, "Got any specific goals in mind for this one?"
"Yes and no. I have a couple things to finish up but, mostly just want to get used to everything that changed."
"Makes sense."
The line was moving quickly and their conversation was cut short as they walked through the portal themselves and into the biggest building Felix had ever seen, from inside or out.
Looking around him, the ground floor they arrived on was massive and stretched out in every direction, as if the tile floors were a natural phenona that ford a vast field. Off to the sides, near the walls, there were multiple halls that stretched out, so of them with signs, others with no labels at all. These halls existed all around the building on every floor Felix could see.
Tilting his head back, Felix couldn't actually make out the ceiling, however far it was. All along the edge of the non-ground floors, as far as he could see, were railings and on the lower ones he could just make out even more openings. Likely each leading to their own winding hall with rooms contained along them.
His rough math put the number of floors, multiplied by the number of halls on each and finally rooms in each hall in building in the low billions but he was almost certain that couldn't be true so he waited to see if there was sothing he was missing.
The entire building looked oddly modern from the inside too with lots of natural light, open space and clean lines forming the architecture.
Once he was done examining his surroundings, Felix finally noticed lody smirking at him but he just ignored her. Unlike her, he hadn't actually seen anything like this before. He was still relatively new to the multiverse after all.
She didn't get a chance to tease him directly though as they were approached by a humanoid female with long white hair and simple clothes. All in all, rather unassuming.
[A - Exotic] Sword Sage: Aryl (Lvl 3892)
Sword Sage? Sword is a pretty general category. Not sure how she can be the Sage of Swords unless… is it just a title? Like Somatic Sage and Spirit Sage for Peace and I respectively?
Felix nudged lody with his Matter Control which confused her greatly, "Is she actually a Sage or is that just a title?"
"It's a title and she's a Sage. Gods have claims over certain titles. Rhonan has most of the combat ones, Edras a bunch of the Academic and so Mage like ones, Radleus has all the rchant ones, Sha'alin has all the thief ones and so on."
"That makes sense. What's she the Sage of then?"
lody smirked, "Sword Fighting."
"That's… super general also… this is sothing I've been wondering for a while now, wouldn't that be a pretty low rarity skill? Once you get to Sage tier in a skill, you're likely to also have a high level and you've probably upgraded and specialized your skill along the way, right?"
"It depends. Aryl doesn't have Sword Fighting as a skill but her class is based entirely around Sword Fighting and she has enough derivative skills of Sword Fighting that are all at Sage proficiency, that they get grouped up. You also don't need to have a skill, to have all the knowledge and understanding of that skill."
"What about Mana Manipulation for example?"
"That's a good exception. There aren't really many derivatives or evolutions of that skill, at least there's only one that I know of. Instead, everyone has the skill but gets different benefits out of it. If you practice and hone your Mana Manipulation speed, the skill will decrease your Cast Ti more than anything else. If you focus on Mana Manipulation quantity, power. Control, stability."
"So then to get to Sage in a skill like that…"
She nodded, "You'd have to re-generalize afterwards. Which is why it was so impressive that Khidell had reached Sage proficiency at all. That along with the skill being notoriously painful to train."
Felix nodded in acknowledgent, "So then…" He thumbed in Aryl's direction, "She's like… super impressive then?"
lody smirked, "Oh yeah. She's super famous. Ridiculously bonkers strong too. Like, definitely high Demi-God tier in terms of raw combat ability."
"Demi-God… Just to be sure…"
She nodded, "Just ans S grade or above. At that point the whole level grade thing breaks down and kind of falls apart. You know how Peace is an exception to the level thing? At that point normal levels and grades are the exception and sentients like Peace are the norm."
"So then to beco a god, you just need to be S grade and open an afterlife?"
"Yeah. Pretty much. It's a lot harder than it sounds but, in essence, yes."
As the last of their group filed in from the portal behind them, Felix looked back to see how many others there were and saw thousands of similar portals and groups behind him. Each of them had an elite of so kind to greet and guide them from A grades and Sages to Demi-Gods.
"Welco to Osgard." Aryl addressed the group, gathering their attention rather quickly.
"You're the group from Eramith and you all have Epic recruitnts. What that ans is, you'll have a little more ti on everything, but not as much as you'd want. First things first, anywhere you can go, you're allowed to go. Yes, that includes getting into locked rooms without the key. I was told to warn you though, it probably isn't a good idea anyways. So doors are locked for a reason."
"As for everything else, the only restrictions are on how much ti you have on the Class and Profession leveling worlds." She sighed a little through her nose, "You'll all get 1 hour of access every day to a C grade Beast Breeding or Resource Collection world of your choice. You will have unlimited ti however, with instructors for sparring, labs and workshops at all tis. Use your ti wisely."
Felix leaned over and whispered to lody, "That doesn't seem like a lot."
"It's a lot. Finding C grade monsters to fight is pretty annoying as is. B and A grade are nearly impossible. So, Gods basically take planets in their domains and terraform them with added Mana so they can breed high grade creatures. Issue is, how long would it take you to clear a dium sized planet if it were covered in monsters?"
"What's dium sized?"
"Eramith sized."
"If it were actually covered and the Mana Density was high, 1,000 epochs?"
"Okay. Creatures that strong can't be packed in very tight so lets just say one per square kiloter."
"50 epochs or so."
"Okay. We need to keep at least half of them alive for them to repopulate the planet."
"So 25 epochs."
"And it would take about 25 epochs to repopulate that half of the planet."
Felix sighed, "So it would literally need to be an entire planet, with people feeding and breeding and managing the creatures to not kill each-other, just so I alone could kill things constantly."
lody nodded, "Yup. So if you have…" She turned and looked around at all the people still streaming in from portals all over, "A few billion looking to farm levels…"
"You'd need a few billion planets, enough mana to cover them and keep them dense and enough people to manage and maintain the herds of creatures on each. Which ans they need to be strong and skilled enough to trivially deal with the beasts themselves."
She shrugged, "Yeah so, not a trivial thing. 1 hour is pretty generous at least compared to other recruitnts. Also that's only really possible for the C grade, don't even think about B or even A grade. That is when it becos a real issue. The Tournant of the Abyss filled that hole for the lucky ones but… yeah, that's not a thing anymore."
Felix nodded in understanding then turned back to their guide and the crowd he had been mindlessly following while he and lody spoke. Quickly replaying everything they had gone over in his mind, she had just walked them around to so of the more popular facilities and explained how to find what they were looking for. He didn't pay much attention to any of it though and figured he would take a look later, if lody didn't drag him around herself, which he was expecting.
"Down this hall you'll mostly find restaurants. As I said before, they aren't organized at all and so of the portals aren't even indexed anymore. These Forgotten Portals were added so long ago, everyone's just forgotten about them."
Felix imdiately noticed a few of his classmates perk up at the idea of finding so forgotten portal that held treasures or resources ripe for the picking.
All he could think about was how stupid that was and how the entire facility seed like a logistical nightmare.
Aryl looked around, seemingly confused for a mont then shrugged, "Can't think of anything else. Any questions?"
A few of the students in their class asked about or hit on her, which Felix pointedly ignored. Others asked about how many of the portals in the building were forgotten and her answer was even more fuel for his logistical nightmare, "No idea. People often find portals that are seemingly forgotten then tell no one about them and co back ti and ti again to profit off them. Like their own personal planet. This is your recruitnt so this is the first ti for many of you but Osgard is completely open. You can visit even without a recruitnt, you just won't have access to trainers or dedicated leveling planets."
lody looked eager to run off so Felix stepped away and just followed her, "How do they control how much ti you use on the Beast and Resource planets? If a bunch of the portals are unknown and you can go anywhere you want, do they just have guards in front of the Resource and Beast planet portals?"
She chuckled in anticipation of Felix's reaction, "Honor system."
The disgust on his face was even better than she was expecting, "How does that make any sense?"
"If soone is abusing anything, you can report them. So Elites that can tell if you're lying will co by and ask you point blank or a stealthy one will follow you. If they confirm the claim, the offender is banned for life and the person who reported them along with the elite that confird the claim, get to split a reward."
"That seems… trivially abusable."
"A lot of this place would be. It only works here though and is a lot less fragile that it seems. Everyone keeps the people below them in check. If an elite were abusing the system, so Demi-God would ban them. If a Demi-God is caught abusing the system, so God would. If they are caught abusing the system, they have to answer to Rhonan."
"So even if I can successfully lie to even you, so stealthy elite would just follow and I'd get kicked out?"
"Yeah, more or less. It's also not super precise. No one is going to kick you out if you're in there for an hour and ten minutes. As long as you make a best effort."
She dragged him into a restaurant and picked out a table then ordered for them in a matter of seconds, definitely having been there before. Once she had, she looked back over at Felix and smiled, "The first ti I ever ca here, I rember so guy getting carried out of a beast portal by so Demi-God. They had been in there for a week but not because they were abusing anything. They overestimated themselves and ended up hiding in a cave, the beasts just outside trapping them. The Demi-God dragged them to a healer and they were fine. No punishnt."
"That's…"
She shrugged, "Judging intent isn't too hard in most cases, for most people. Then there are wild cards like you and Peace. You could probably get away with it but… I wouldn't risk it."
"Fair enough."
"So." She leaned forward a little, "Tell about your recruitnts."
"They were fine. I climbed a bunch of mountains, t a God, upgraded a bunch of skills, Peace almost died but, then he didn't. He fought a God. I learned super secret magic. I made so machines. I made so spells. I read so books. I got so new skills. Moved so stuff around. Swapped out my head. Smuggled so research." He shrugged, "Now we're here."
lody looked at him for a mont, expression blank, before her lips finally curled up into a smirk, "Well. Sounds like you had a productive few terms. What are your plans now that you're here?"
"Levels. Spells. Constructs. Iron out my skills."
She shrugged, "Seems simple enough."
"What about you. How are the bakeries?"
She smiled like she didn't expect him to have rembered or cared, "Actually really well, thank you. We're still trying to nail down a set nu and process but I'm already making money which… is more than I expected for a bakery to be honest. Speaking of process though… how are your Mana Attunent crystals coming along?"
Felix shrugged, "We've gotten them to just over 90% efficiency which mostly just ans 90% the correct attunent and 10% noise."
Her eyes widened, "90% is way better than before."
He nodded, "Yeah. I'll swap out the ones I'm using as my efficiency goes up but for now, I accomplished what I needed to with them."
"In that case, you have ti to do a favor."
He squinted, "Depends the favor."
She leaned in a little further, "The only reason my bakeries are at all profitable, is that my pastries aren't just sweet treats. They also… provide buffs."
Felix nodded, "That… makes a lot of sense."
"I'm still experinting with the best process. The best buffs are Anima infused pastries. They stack with all buffs from spells and potions but they're nearly impossible to make. I and a few people who owed favors had to all work together to create one batch."
"You want to look into using Mana to create buffs in pastries and want so crystals to make the process fast and efficient."
She nodded, "Yup, exactly."
"If you give a sample of the Attunent, I can start the process of calculating the best configurations…" Felix stopped himself and sighed, "You don't know what attunent you want, do you?"
She smiled, "Not a clue."
"We can… work on it. What about imbuing Anima with specific convictions into the ingredients themselves?"
"It's theoretically possible but… I think I would literally need Amatara just to manage the crops."
I wonder if I could do it… or create a construct to… in the future. I can't even create convictions at will myself just yet.
"I see."
Their food arrived and they each scarfed down a small pile of at, Felix regrowing his hair with the incoming matter, then lody paid and led him out of the room and up through the center of the building.
They flew up to one of the higher floors as Felix tried to figure out how anyone that couldn't fly moved through the building.
Maybe they jump? Not everyone is physically focused though… There must be portals on the lower floors that lead up.
Following lody down the walkway, down a specific hall, he stood behind her mostly zoned out as she opened a door and led him into a simple bedroom with a single large bed.
She spun around and smiled at him, just the slightest hint of a smirk on her lips, "What do you think?"
"Seems nice. This your room?"
"Our room. While we're here at least."
Felix looked over at the bed then back at her, "One bed? Is that supposed to be an offer?"
She shimmied her shoulders a little, "Well I-"
"Seems more like pleading to ."
Her jaw dropped in a combination of mock offense and real shock.
"Either way, no."
She laughed, "You don't even sleep anyways. Why would we bother with another room at all? Also you have a Pocket Ho."
lody walked over to the right side of the room and rested her palm against a closed door, "I figured you wouldn't mind sharing a room, considering I'm paying for it." As she finished speaking, she pushed the door open to reveal a massive workshop.
It was only about half the size of Ked's warehouse sized workshop on Eramith but that was still far bigger than he realistically needed.
The tools and tables in the room though, looked brand new and more advanced than Ked's, most of which were homade. Both would be functional but these looked precise in a way Ked's didn't.
Peering into the room, after gaping at the workshop itself for a mont, Felix realized there was no other door inside the room. Considering how thoughtful it was for lody to have rented the room for him, he decided to tease her back a little, "This looks amazing. Thank you. Just one thing though… There's no other entrance to that room. What if I'm coming and going and you happen to be changing in your room?"
"Now that would be a tragedy, wouldn't it?" She winked, "I guess we'll have to find out."
He snorted then took a step back towards the exit, "Leveling ti. I don't want to lose my hour."
"Oh. I'm coming with you."
Felix winced at the exponential loss of experience, "Uh…"
She slapped his shoulder as she passed him, "It'll be worth it. I promise. Give one day. You can always just ditch tomorrow."
Fair enough.
She led him through the building and and into a portal onto what looked to be a barren planet of grayish stone and sand. With the accompanying lack of breathable air, Felix definitely felt a little like he was on the moon. A feeling only dispelled by the nearly flat and distant horizon indicating how massive the planet was.
He didn't say anything about the apparent barrenness of the planet because he trusted lody, at least enough to give her the benefit of the doubt, as he followed her.
She had already activated an item to give herself breathable air and Felix did the sa with a spell as he followed her through the air, a hundred ters over the surface.
As she flew, lody's body turned so she was sitting on an invisible chair as she withdrew the sa instrunt Felix had seen her use a few tis already. As soon as she pulled it out this ti though, Felix could tell it was not a normal instrunt. No doubt due to his increases in Anima Senses and general Soul strengthening, that instrunt was one of the only items Felix had ever seen that made him imdiately wary.
The complexity alone was life like along the strength of will embedded in the anima-no, the soul within the instrunt, surpassed The System sub chunk he had fought. Concentrated strength of will wasn't the sub-chunk's strong suit by any ans but still, it was impressive nonetheless. Put up head to head, he was pretty sure the entirety of the sub-System pitted against the instrunt would win, but only because that was akin to a million soldiers fighting just one. The complexity though, was more than what ca out of just being a core soul. It was like it was the soul from a more advanced being.
Even all that, was just what Felix could sense though and he was certain he was still missing a lot.
Instead of tapping her fingers against the instrunt, lody actually plucked it a couple of tis which released two subsequent shock-waves of Anima that smacked up against Felix's outer soul layer.
A few monts of silence passed before Felix heard a rumbling noise coming from the ground. Looking down, he saw hundreds of alien creatures explode out of the ground.
[C - Epic] Kora-ka-gorak (Lvl 1908)
Each one was long and looked like the cross between a serpent, a bug and a scorpion. They had exoskeletons and giant bone spikes as their front limbs along with a mouth that was simply open, no jaw or other apparent thod of closing it visible.
Dropping down just a little, Felix began simultaneously pulling from multiple of his Attuned Cores and forming the Mana into blades, bombs and javelins.
He decided he would have to get an actual number later by casting a traditional spell with nodes, but for the ti being he laughed aloud as his focus had seemingly sky rocketed. His rough estimate was that it was at least 10 tis what it had been.
Realizing how much it had increased, inspired him to test out his other Mana related abilities and while Mana control speed and power were nice, the range was what he found imdiately exciting.
Reaching outwards and casting spells at his maximum range, Felix found he could cast spells nearly two hundred ters away from himself. Considering how many spells he could cast with his increased focus and Attuned Cores, Felix felt like a walking war machine.
Lowering himself towards the ground so he could reach outwards further in every direction, Felix cast explosions and blades all around him as he swept along the surface of the planet obliterating the bugs that were crawling up to the surface.
lody continued to play but only plucked a string or two every couple of kiloters, just enough that Felix never ran out of bugs to kill.
She was right. It was worth it to bring her along.
By the end of the hour, Grim had to break Felix out of the trance brought on by the imnse fun he was having experinting with spells and abilities and Felix found he had gained 10 levels in his class.
Ding You have slain 5182 [C - Epic] Kora-ka-gorak (Lvl 1847-1982)
Ding You have gained 10 levels in [C - Ancient] Reaper
Even though lody had said they weren't strict, the two of them left the planet just a few minutes short of their hour at which point the two of them split off. lody went off to find sothing for her bakeries while Felix, went to retrieve his familiar.
They agreed to et back in the room to go shopping together afterwards.
Although she was sad to leave her new friends, both of which were now in the C grade, Nova was also happy to rejoin Felix.
He arrived back in the workshop a little sooner than lody and began taking inventory of the workshop until she arrived.
Once she did, Nova hopped onto her shoulder and began excitedly owing through the tale of her own recruitnts. Felix wasn't entirely certain lody couldn't understand her but he was also pretty sure Nova knew what to keep secret. She was smarter than she seed.
Though the portals and halls containing them weren't organized on a whole, they weren't entirely random either. There were so halls that held entirely or almost entirely shops. Others that held mostly restaurants.
The hall they walked through was a collection of storefronts throughout the planets and sectors Rhonan controlled that had portals in Osgard. Surprisingly to Felix, not all of them were particularly impressive. It seed as though the requirents to have a portal here weren't as stringent as he would have expected.
lody was a fantastic guide though and knew which shops to avoid as he was mostly interested in bulk material suppliers.
While a store like Nela's was useful for specific materials and having them pre-shaped, they didn't carry bulk materials or really anything but material for very specific use cases. For Felix, he really only needed generic material that he could use to make constructs at the mont. Anything more specialized and he could get Nova to transmute and form it for him.
In the future he decided he would have to get samples of all the materials he could find from shops like Nela's for Nova.
In the anti, even though he was relying on lody's seemingly bottomless wallet, Felix just looked for whatever was decently strong and cheap, with lots of stock.
Transporting it all back to the workshop lody had rented him, Felix unloaded the materials along with Art while lody read in his Soul Space, connected by a Soul Tendril. Felix and Art communicated through Mark along with Grim and a few experts in the field of constructs, at least with respect to everyone else in his Mind City, to figure out which constructs they would focus on and how many they could make. The biggest limiting factor though, was Anima.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
He had gotten a solid influx from the burrowing bug things they had just killed but even if he just used Spirits-which he still hadn't figured out how to control-as the souls, he needed Anima to fuel his skills. Specifically Imbue Creation because at this point, he didn't see any point in not doing so with each and every construct he created. He also needed so to peer into the Spirit Realm, though he was hoping that wasn't much.
Luckily, he should have a daily supply of at least so Anima from the hour they spent hunting every day.
He only spent a few hours working with Art and they tried to optimize everything so they could minimize Art's reliance on him. Felix did however, offer to imbue Art with an Enchanter Profession, now that he was outside of Felix's Soul Space but he refused.
Apparently he had heard about Zero from Grim and was hoping to achieve sothing similar for themself.
As they worked, Felix also gradually got better at using his Mage Hand ability. It was no where near a real hand and it would be a long ti before it ever was, but it was still incredibly useful to have another hand to hold things. He could then use one hand to move his quill and two to hold the object he was enchanting steady.
At the sa ti, Nova transmuted so specific materials that they expected to need ahead of ti so she could join Felix once he was done.
The plan for the majority of the rest of the day, was to train.
Apparently lody had already set sothing up for the two of them before the recruitnt had even started. She had also invited Adaline, who had apparently, declined.
The trio headed through the building and into another portal which led into a short hallway then into so kind of large open training room. The room looked to be made of sothing like concrete and was a few kiloters long and wide and about a kiloter tall. Considering how massive it was, Felix was pretty certain it was spatially expanded but if it was, the enchantnts doing so weren't anywhere near them.
The only thing in the room, was a person.
[S - Ancient] Tam (Lvl 5824)
Level 5824 but still only S? I guess lody did ntion everything breaks down at that point anyways.
She looked like a normal sized woman with blonde hair and a rather skimpy outfit that looked like a Sorcerer's robes with as much fabric as possible removed. Felix didn't judge her at all, not just because he didn't care in the slightest what people wore, and not because her body was carefully crafted to her idea perfection over the course of her evolutions. It was hard to judge her for her lack of clothes because she was hot.
Looking at her from the portal, a half kiloter away, Felix could see the heat ripples in the air around her. Like she was in the process of constantly cooking the air itself.
As they approached she smiled wide and waved as the effect disappeared, likely due to her manual intervention.
lody rushed over and jumped into a hug as soon as it wasn't dangerous to do so and Tam easily caught her.
"lody! It's been a while."
Tam released her and lody hopped back a step onto the ground, "How have you been?"
Tam shrugged, "Sa old, sa old. You? How's the bakery going?"
"Bakeries now." lody puffed up her chest a little teasingly, "They're going well. Thanks for agreeing to do this by the way."
"Of course. You know dad's always up in my business about politics and stuff so this should get him off my back plus… it'll be fun. Right?" She said as she glanced over at Felix.
lody grinned, "I promise, you won't be disappointed."
I'm not sure what she's expecting of … either of them… they do know I'm still just a lowly C grade… right?
"He looks… interesting…" Tam's eyes shifted over to Nova sitting proudly on lody's shoulder, "What's with the Daemon though?"
"This is Nova." lody gestured back and to the side, towards Felix, with her head, "His familiar."
Tam's eyes imdiately squinted then, her entire face drew up into a wide smile, "I think you might be right. Introductions first though." She leaned over past lody to look right at Felix behind her and waved to him, "Hi. I'm Tam."
Felix nodded, "Felix."
lody turned to the side and looked back at Felix, "Tam is Romar's sister."
Felix's jaw opened a little instinctively before he closed it, "I see."
I wonder how she feels about Romar being the next in line for the… throne? Crown? Diety-dom?
"Nice to finally et you." She smiled, "lody talks about you a lot you know."
She talks that often… to a Demi-God? Guess it tracks, given her lineage.
Felix shrugged, "I didn't even know you existed before this. Kind of assud Romar was the eldest."
She didn't seem offended at all, "Nah. I gave up on becoming a God when I picked my first class. What really cented it though, was when I refused to evolve into a star. I an… who wants to be a giant ball of fire? The logistics alone of not being able to interact with anyone outside of your family without burning them…" She shivered, "Not for ."
lody smirked a little, "Instead, she decided to beco a Spirit."
Tam looked at lody in mock shock and offense, "Don't go giving away all my secrets. A girl's gotta keep so things to herself to stay mysterious." She looked back over at Felix, "Technically, I was a Fire Elental and now I'm a kind of Fire Celestial so… still a Spirit. Upside being, I can touch people-" She accentuated her point by groping lody, "Without hurting them."
Felix nodded, "So similar path to Nova then?"
She looked over at Nova and shrugged, "Similar. Daemon is higher than Elental. I wouldn't be surprised if she was offered Celestial maybe not in B grade but in A grade definitely." She winced a little, "Little hard though because that one isn't totally up to The System. Spirits and The System-" She brought the splayed tips of her fingers together, pointedly not intertwining them, "-don't really like each-other much."
Huh.
"Alright." Tam looked at all three of them in turn, "First things first. I need more information so I don't accidentally kill you guys." She looked at lody directly, "You I mostly know, any major changes recently I need to know about?"
lody shook her head, "Nothing noteworthy."
"Alright and no using that thing on , right?"
lody laughed once, "I'm never using that thing on anyone."
Tam nodded in understanding then turned to Felix, "What about you and your familiar? Race, Defenses, Vitality, Endurance."
Felix looked at Nova and thought about it for a mont then turned to Tam, "Familiar first. Nova is a Primal Matter Daemon." He shared her status screen with Tam which was significantly different from Felix's.
Na:NovaPower2,949Race:[C - Ancient] Primal Matter Daemon (Lvl 1,946)Defense2,948Health:29,486,000 / 29,486,000ntal2,903Mana:12,000,000 / 12,000,000
Tam looked at it for a mont, squinted, then leaned into the invisible screen, "What are these stats?"
"That's without her using my Class Skills."
She glared at him.
"Reaper's skills. Buffs all stats."
She looked at him like she was trying to figure out if he was serious or not, "Your familiar is… too strong. I take it their ntal stats are so high because yours are high?"
Felix shrugged, "Intelligence is my highest stat."
She nodded slowly, "Right…"
"As for . My race is Unique and heavily modified. My Endurance and Vitality are 4.6 and 5.2 million respectively with my Reaper's Skills active, which they always are. As for defenses, those are mostly Soul Defenses at the mont. I can cast a number of barriers but I prefer to just dodge if I can."
Her jaw hung just a little for a mont before she shook her head, "What? Why are your defensive stats so high? Aren't you a Caster or sothing?" Tam looked at lody for confirmation who was happily smiling wide, enjoying her reactions.
lody nodded.
"They aren't that high. It's mostly because modifying my body to be more resilient is much easier than modifying anything else. There are also a lot of beasts that have high defensive stats so learning from them helps a lot." Felix looked at lody, "The Giant helped a lot too."
She nodded and her smile widened a little in anticipation.
"The what?" Tam looked at lody then grasped her by the shoulders and vigorously shook her, "You fought a Giant?"
"We-e-e-e k-i-i-i-ll-ed o-o-o-ne." lody responded.
"Okay…" Tam pressed her fingertips to her forehead, and almost under her breath, "If my brother's stats weren't equally as absurd…"
She looked up at Felix, "I need more information here. Can you handle a mature concept?"
Now it was Felix's turn, "A what?"
"A concept?"
Tam swiped the back of her hand across her forward, "Phew. So you aren't invincible. It's a little hard to explain but… You know about curses right?"
Felix nodded, completely enraptured by the direction of her explanation.
"You know convictions?"
He nodded again.
"Concepts are like the third pillar of Anima." Tam lifted her palm in front of her and produced a fla. As far as Felix could tell, it was a perfectly normal fla in every sense. He probably could have put his hand in without being hard.
"I'll explain in terms of Fire for… obvious reasons. A Concept is like… the fundantal experience of a thing. In the case of Fire, it's the totality of the experience of Fire. I know that sounds weird and necessarily confusing but that's only because we're sentients. We experience emotions like happiness and sadness. Anima is experience. It's consciousness and it exists everywhere. That ans, in this fla-" She stretched her hand out a little more, "-there is Anima. That Anima is or has an experience."
Felix nodded, "Alright, all that makes sense. What's the point though? What does it matter?"
She smirked a little, "If I just pump this fla full of Anima, it wouldn't really do anything. If I bound Anima to the fla, it would beco one with the existing Anima and learn so of the experience of a fla but, it would also dilute it. If I bound Anima with a Conviction, it would overtake the existing Anima and influence the fla. For example, though it's a stupid conviction, take destruction for example."
The fla in her hand shifted from orange, yellow and white to almost entirely white with a black outline, much like the trails from Felix's Reaper skills when he moved quickly or with a lot of strength.
"This is sowhat useful but not ideal. This fla is no longer fire. It's been distorted and though its destructive power might be higher, it lost a lot in that process. This makes it unstable and realistically, not as useful as you might imagine."
The fla shifted again, this ti growing grayer and Felix suddenly felt and aura of Oblivion. It was cursed, or at least, on its way there. The curse itself wasn't very strong or mature to the point where Felix thought it was wrong to properly call it a curse.
"If I bind a curse-or even the echo of a curse-to this fla, it completely consus the fla. It doesn't just distort it." She made the fla vanish then replaced it with a new fla, this ti she imbued it with the curse of Desire, again severely weakened. This ti, the shape of the fla itself was gone and instead, she was left with a rippling ball of hot air with quickly dissipating heat.
"So Curses are one end, they completely consu and transform in a way where the initial state is completely lost. Convictions alter in a way where so of the initial state is left at the end but it not all of it. Concepts are the initial state, sort of. Applying a Concept to a fla, the Concept of fire-" She replaced the ball of air with a new fla.
At first, the fla looked perfectly normal. Just like all the previous flas had. Then, it fell apart.
The fla itself flickered and distorted itself weirdly, like it was trying to contort to fit so abstract container.
"-it won't work. You're essentially trying to apply a new initial state to sothing that already has one. So instead, you create the fla with the concept or, you unbind the anima and replace it. The forr is harder but way stronger."
This ti, instead of a normal fla appearing above her palm, she created what looked physically, like a normal fla. It wasn't.
The instant it appeared, Felix felt it. The fla had an aura, like a curse but completely different.
The aura made it feel like the fla itself was the true source of all fire. The original. The very first fla to have ever existed. Eternally burning. It was the hottest fla. The brightest fla. It flickered and shifted perfectly. It rivaled stars. It could burn stars. It could burn anything.
Even just looking at it, Felix felt like he was being burned. The air around it looked like it was burning. The fla looked bright, too bright. Although he could separate what he was seeing from what he was feeling ntally, and he knew it was all an illusion, it still affected his perception in the mont.
Tam closed her hand and the fla vanished, "That is a fla created with a Concept from the get go. It's resistant to change and that makes it pretty strong. Water and suffocation aren't enough to put it out and it burns."
"So you put a Concept up against a curse or a conviction. What happens?"
She shrugged, "That depends. Which is the strongest, the most mature? For the most part, Curses win. That's not because Curses are stronger than Convictions or Concepts though. That's because mature Curses spread really easily and are oddly common here so, we end up dealing with curses that have been growing since before our universe was born. In the Spirit Realm, Concepts are more prevalent, have matured a lot with the higher tier Spirits and sotis win. I'm sure there's sowhere out there where Convictions win, but I've never been there."
"So why would one ever use a Concept in an attack if you could just use a Curse instead?"
"Well, other than the fact that a mature Curse would consu a planet at minimum before stopping, and that imbuing a curse into an attack would require you control the curse and subdue it, and that the curse would consu your attack just as much as your target making it relatively easy to avoid… you wouldn't."
"I take it that's not the point of them?"
"Not really." She shrugged, "But that's not really the point of… anything? Well, Anima in general. Doesn't make it useless though."
Felix nodded, "I take it for an Elental, this cos easy?"
She nodded, "Relatively. It's one of the biggest power spikes for Elentals. Spirits less so because they tend to be less focused. For example I don't think a Concept of Matter exists or if it does, it wouldn't do much. Matter is too broad and so the fundantal experience of Matter would either have to be pared down to the basest components of Matter and do nothing, or include everything and be too broad to do anything worthwhile."
"Speaking of, I don't know that I've ever really encountered an Elental. Seen a couple in passing as familiars but in general, are Sprites and Elentals just really rare?"
lody giggled and Tam shrugged, "System does not mix well with Spirits and Elentals. Or-" She scratched her head, "-would it be the other way around?"
"In what way?"
"Just that the way The System functions, is like a natural repellent to most Spirits and Elentals. Only really strong ones can survive long after their inception and rarely do they stick around at that point."
"Huh."
I assu she ans System static? I wonder if it bothers Nova…
Felix nodded once and t Tam's gaze, "Okay so, to answer your question, I probably wouldn't fare well against a Concept."
She giggled, "I figured."
"I'd like you to hit with one anyways."
She cocked a brow, "Oh? Quite confident, aren't we?"
"I'd like to know how I fare against them now, in case I ever encounter a concept in a more lethal situation."
"Okay. Let's give it a shot."
Felix backed up a few steps then held out his arm next to him.
She looked at him and nodded once their eyes t then she cast what looked like simultaneously like a simple Fire Bolt and a literal star compressed down to the size of one. He was pretty sure it was just a Fire Bolt but the feeling it gave off when created with a simple Concept was ridiculous.
The bolt hit his arm except, not really. It just flew right through like it was nothing.
Despite being just a couple inches in diater, it also completely severed his arm and turned all his flesh within half a ter into ash.
Even though the Concept was Anima based, the attack didn't significantly injure his Soul. He could feel it had so elent of Soul Damage to it but it wasn't significant and wasn't enough to overco his Soul Defenses. With the Concept though, the Fire itself eclipsed any Fire Spell Felix had ever cast or seen, even her brother's. It felt hotter and deadlier than the planet core he had drained in the World Event.
She literally only cast a Fire Bolt. Considering how cheap those are, this is like the ultimate tool for spell efficiency… I wonder if I could create the Concept of specific Mana Attunents and embed them into my Attuned Cores…
As Felix's arm regrew, lody and Tam looking a little more concerned than he felt necessary, he walked back over to them, "How do I create a Concept?"
Tam stared at his arm with a worried expression for a few more seconds before answering, "You don't. Not really. It's more accurate to say you discover a Concept, not create it. Or uncover it? Both. Definitely not create one though."
"Oh, actually that makes sense. I understand. Anything else I should know about them? Is there a rule of thumb or sothing on how complex sothing can be before a Concept doesn't really do anything?"
She shook her head, "No. It's more of a feel thing. It will take a long ti. Romar is a prodigy and absurdly lucky. Don't expect to figure anything out in less than a few thousand years and that's only if you're equally as lucky and even more of a prodigy."
Felix cocked his head slightly and she continued.
"Romar's got our entire family to help him. He was pushed along by all of us who have been working with the Concept of Fire for millions of years. Even then, he picked it up faster than anyone except . He hasn't mastered it yet but… he's closer than most."
Okay but… I just need soone to help then… this is all experiential anyways so harvesting a soul and reading its experiences should work just fine. Plus, she just told the perfect place to do that, where Concepts are strong enough to overco curses.
"I see. Alright, let's spar then I'd like to ask you more about The Spirit Realm after if that's alright?"
She shrugged, "I don't mind. You don't have to ask everything all at once. I already agreed to spar with you guys on and off for the rest of the term."
Felix looked over at lody who nodded, "I found a few elites who I was friends with or owed favors and we'll just rotate between them when they have ti."
An involuntary smile crept onto Felix's face, "Aweso."
The sparring went jut as Felix hoped it would. Tam basically just wiped the floor with the two of them fairly trivially.
Her most basic spells punched holes right through his barriers, were nearly too fast for him to dodge and he was forced to stop and regenerate missing chunks of his body constantly.
Considering how much she was holding back, ant Felix had plenty to learn from her. He had already begun to learn in their first spar where she used only simple spells, like Fire Bolts that chased him around instead of firing in a line. She didn't make the spell form any more complicated than it needed to be though, she simply attached a touch of Anima to it. The spell wasn't even close to sapient or sentient but could perform more complex actions than a base spell made of Mana alone without complex spell forms.
He had already been considering doing that and knew it was possible, but he was beginning to realize how to do it. He saw how she did it and learned from that. Picked up on small tricks he would have otherwise had to test and realize for himself. For example, she added dormant Force Mana to her Fire Bolts for the Anima to use to move the spell. The Anima didn't just want to follow him, it held within it the experience of moving a spell using mana. Almost like an instinct cast but not quite strong enough to be an actual spell. Just enough to shift the course of the spell.
Although Felix was a little disappointed he wasn't going to see any of Tam's best spells, he still had plenty of ti left in the recruitnt.
He also wasn't sure how lody would fare in a real spar but as it turned out, she did better than Felix most of the ti. She not only seed to be very proficient with a sword, but she also switched between the sword and her instrunt in a fast and elegant way. Often using the sword to try and launch an attack then switching back to her instrunt to blow away a Fire Bolt with a golden wave of Anima.
She actually ended up attacking in the fight, which Felix didn't. Although, Tam did seem to be launching attacks towards Felix a little more frequently than lody.
Nova participated a bit, running around and dodging but Felix could tell even from the other side of the massive facility, Tam dramatically weakened her spells for Nova so, it was more like playing than sparring.
Afterwards, they all went to dinner which was fine in Felix's eyes, nothing remarkable.
Tam mostly ended up asking lody about her bakeries and catching up on gossip because she had been in the Spirit Realm a lot recently.
From there, they all headed back to the room lody had rented where lody fell onto the bed and Tam sat on the edge of it, "So, what did you want to know about The Spirit Realm?"
Felix stood in the middle of the room and faced her, "Everything. First of all, how do I manage Spirits?"
She cocked her head, "How do you an?"
"In my last recruitnt, I spent so ti unlocking new profession skills. One of those is Summon Spirit." Felix shared the skill description with her.
She looked at it, her eyes squinting as she read through it until finally she glared at him accusatorially, "What is your Profession exactly?"
Felix just brushed the question aside, "It's Ancient. Mostly construct stuff."
Tam recognized he was avoiding the question and it looked like she was going to press him for a mont then she shook her head and sighed, "Okay. I take it you used this?"
He nodded, "On a simple construct body. It didn't go well."
She chuckled a little, "Yeah. That makes sense. Okay so the basics, Spirits are kind of like souls without bodies, most of the ti. They often act like children because the Anima in their souls are more active and they seek new experiences constantly. Mostly, their souls are just structured differently from material sentients. They don't have a Core Soul or more accurately, their soul is their Core Soul, it's all one thing."
Oh holy shit. Peace is a spirit now.
"What happens if they do bind to a body?"
She shrugged, "Nothing special. Highly depends on how they're bound to the body and how synergistic it is. A Fire Elental with a Mana Core and a body of Fire gets to do a lot of cool shit. A high tier Celestial in a body with low compatibility would be a D grade at most, in terms of physical stats. At that point though, they would make up for it in Spirit attacks and defense. I beca a Spirit, a Celestial, and already had my body so, I brought it along with and have a very high compatibility."
"Okay, back to Spirits. How do I control one if I summon them?"
She smirked a little, "Let's say your skill read summon human. How would you control them?"
He sighed, "Whoops. I was making so weird assumptions there. I offer them sothing they want."
Tam tilted her head a little, "That will get them here but often tis, you can't just command them to do sothing or give them another gift because running around with a body is like, the ultimate gift already."
"How would you do it?"
"I can just command them mostly." She shrugged, "Perks of being a Celestial." She gestured towards Nova with her chin, "Nova could to. Daemon is pretty high on the general hierarchy. At least, her presence would make them sit long enough to hear you out."
"This hierarchy, how does The Spirit Realm work? What's it like?"
"For the most part, it's like a bunch of empty space. Just like this material universe except, less empty and more of it is empty. The parts that are empty aren't just empty. The emptiness is a sparse sea of Anima. There are cities though, sort of. Those are places with high Anima density and it would be more accurate to call them a Dream or an Illusion."
"A constructed mory?" lody offered from the bed, sowhat surprisingly because Felix was sowhat sure she had been asleep.
Tam nodded, "Yeah. Just like that."
"You said there were cities there?"
"Sort of. Spirit Realms are kind of a per universe thing. The one attached to this universe has one major city then a bunch of minor outposts." She sighed a little wearily, "It used to be more lively but ever since the advent of The System, it's been slowly declining."
"Why?"
She shrugged, "I haven't been around long enough to know but, I've heard the Anima, the emptiness and everything else, used to be less empty and the emptiness, less expansive. It used to be denser and fuller. Lively."
Interesting…
"You were there until sowhat recently. How do you get there?"
She winced, "It's… a little complicated."
"Try ."
Tam sighed, "Basically… The Spirit Realm is outside of Space and Ti… sort of."
"Oh. That's simple enough. You just disentangle your matter from Space Ti and I take it move into the Ambient Anima then?"
She looked at him with a thoughtful expression, "Uh… yeah, I guess? Don't just do that though. To safely go there and co back, without losing ti and everything, you need an anchor. Basically you place an anchor in reality then dive into the Anima. While ti doesn't pass there, not really, ti here goes on. When you want to co back, you use the anchor."
Felix winced, "I get it. Without the anchor, you'd have a hard ti coming back to the ti where all of this is. I'll ask just to make sure, but it is not possible to ti travel like that, right?"
She shook her head, "No. Ti travel doesn't actually make sense outside of novels and fantasies."
That's what I thought. I guess the cylinder analogy holds up pretty well here. The Spirit Realm is within the cylinder. If you tried to go into the past, you wouldn't find the past, you'd see nothing or sothing but nothing you knew. All matter I know exists in this ti. I need to be able to co back to the ti when the matter exists, even if that's changing and moving over ti.
Felix offered an analogy to confirm, "Like boats moving through a river, I leave the boat and spend ti ashore. Even if there are other boats ahead or behind, I don't want to go back to them. When I'm done, I want my boat."
She nodded, "Yes, actually exactly like that. You can either put a beacon in the boat for you to find or tie yourself to it with a rope. The rope thod is pretty limiting though."
Or calculate its final location but… that would be risky.
"A beacon would also be risky though, right? What if soone destroyed it."
"Yeah, that is a risk. I put mine with my family so I wasn't really worried."
I definitely want to visit that city at so point for sure.
"How do you find the city in an entire universe of Anima?"
"A lot easier than you'd think. There's really only one of them and space doesn't really exist, rember? You can kind of just will yourself there."
"Oh. Actually that makes… sense. Okay last thing then I'll let you go, can I summon a Spirit with you here?"
She nodded quickly, "Yes definitely. I was actually hoping to see your skill in action."
Felix raised a finger for her to wait and quickly set out the ritual on the floor. At the sa ti, he had Art put the finishing touches on a construct body in the lab.
Once the ritual was set up, Felix walked back into the workshop and carried the construct body out next to the ritual. The body itself was one large sphere for the bottom half of the body, a humanoid torso and three smaller orbs, identical in size, for the head and arms.
He infused the pieces with Mana and attached them together then used it along with a simple feeling encoded in Anima to broadcast a ssage into the Spirit Realm which he now knew, was just the Ambient Anima.
The feeling was simple, just sothing along the lines of construct engineering.
He wasn't expecting much because it wasn't a very complex feeling and likely not overly attractive to Spirits but to his surprise, he got a response almost imdiately.
This ti, Felix had advertised the body but he didn't offer it up imdiately. Instead, the Spirit appeared right in the middle of the ritual circle and Felix could see it, only because his Anima senses were encoded into his vision.
It looked very much like a cloud of Anima in every sense and he was pretty sure that's exactly what it was. The only large differentiating factors between it and the rest of the ambient Anima was that it was denser, held almost entirely common experiences, and loosely ford a shape that stayed together.
The shape was sothing akin to a candle fla but about the size of Felix's hand.
Though it didn't have a distinct face or even defined shape, Felix could imdiately tell where it was looking and read its expressions as soon as it appeared. It didn't even have anything to do with his Anima Senses being strong at all and more to do with the fact that he was vaguely familiar with reading people using them. The Spirit seed to constantly be broadcasting everything so it was very trivial to follow.
Felix's assumption was that in the Spirit Realm and with other Spirits, the way the Spirit broadcast itself essentially took the place of facial expressions and diversity.
Though it was more subtle, Felix also got a general vibe of who the Spirit was. He didn't get much but he seriously wondered what lody and Tam were getting from it.
lody didn't seem to react much, sitting up a little in the bed but Tam stood and had already completely suppressed her presence through the ambient Anima slightly before the Spirit appeared. lody in general didn't advertise much but it was more than enough for the Spirit to notice her.
A few monts after it appeared, after a mont of solidifying and adjusting, it looked from Felix to lody to Nova, apparently not seeing Tam at all.
It didn't spend much ti on lody or Felix but Nova, it stared at Nova and didn't look away once it had.
"How do I talk to this thing?" Felix looked at lody and Tam.
"Sa way you talk to Nova, I suspect." Tam nodded at the Spirit indicating he should give it a shot.
Felix nodded and took a step forward then broadcast his ssage into the Anima, "Welco to the Material World, Spirit. I wish to make a deal with you."
The Spirit finally pulled its gaze from Nova and looked at Felix with a fair bit of contempt and derision, "Who are you? You sent the signal? I was promised making and engineering and a body."
"I did. Last ti I gave out a body for free, it didn't work out so well. Now, I want to make a contract."
The Spirit lit up at that notion, "A contract? Like a… Spirit contract?"
Felix knew a Spirit contract was just a soul contract, not anything Spirit Realm specific, "Yes."
They emanated a feeling of deep satisfaction, like Felix had fallen right into its trap. It wasn't a feeling Felix would have advertised in their position but he wasn't sure if they were just terrible at containing themselves or if it was just a difference in the way Humans and Spirits expressed themselves, "Terms?"
"I provide you a body, brain, materials, knowledge, a workshop and you build things with and for . You don't break things or hurt anyone without my permission. You can leave but not with the body I provided. You listen to my or anyone else I deem to be in command's orders."
The Spirit made it seem like it was making a hard decision but it was obvious to Felix it was going to accept. For whatever reason, the Spirit felt like it was absolutely getting the better side of the deal here. Felix was pretty sure he had an idea as to why and the Spirit was in for a rude awakening if he was right.
It briefly looked over at Nova, trying to gauge sothing but Nova was so disinterested, it changed its mind and looked back at Felix.
"Hmm… Your terms are… steep but, the experience of making things and learning is what I live for so, how can I refuse. I accept." The Spirit offered Felix a contract which essentially amounted to a false conviction that would be placed on their souls.
It was exactly how Soul contracts worked and made it so they were nearly infallible. Neither party could do anything with the intent to break the contract. The downside though, was that if one party had a stronger soul than the other, they could essentially distort the convictions and bully the other party, or even trivially break it. The contract worked by essentially having the Soul of each party, restrict the other.
Felix accepted the contract which put a temporary binding between their Souls and imdiately felt a burst of will power from the Spirit. It was like it was trying to take control in the contract and latch onto his soul. He didn't stop it manually and simply let it past his second layer while simultaneously reaching out himself.
He didn't want to kill the Spirit or completely crush it, just put it in its place so, he completely surrounded its soul and squeezed hard but just for a brief mont.
The Spirit imdiately yelped-which was more like a burst of shock and pain in the Anima around it-and its reaching into his Soul vanished. Felix released it just a mont later and the Spirit imdiately recoiled, physically moving away and shrinking itself down.
"Wha-"
It was about that mont when Tam finally let her presence be known, echoing herself out into the ambient Anima. It wasn't particularly loud or surprisingly strong at all. It was nothing like Aro Zaki or Amatara. It was like a slight ripple at most.
The Spirit felt it and imdiately turned towards her. Its form shrunk down even further and Felix's interpretation was that it was paling as it released a confused jumble. Almost like it couldn't actually find the words.
"I- Yo- Why- What is going on!"
"You just made a deal with my friend over here." Tam smiled as he leaned her head in towards the Spirit, frightening it further.
"I didn't- I- Your Fiery Eminence, I-" The Spirit dropped down like it was bowing.
"Do you need to bind you to the body or can you handle that?" Felix cut in, wanting to get a move on.
"I- DON'T. I can bind myself." The Spirit rushed over to the body Felix pointed at and dove into it.
It took a few minutes before it finally adjusted itself to its new body and started moving but that amounted to little more than convulsions.
"What is this body and how am I supposed to make anything with this?"
Felix sighed and walked the Spirit through how it was supposed to move around and interact with things. The main orb mostly had spells for movent on it and contained the Fore Attuned Mana battery to power the entire thing. The torso contained the Mana computer brain and was mostly designed to contain and protect it. The three smaller orbs though, were covered in spell forms.
The spells were based on Felix's experintation and attempts to create Mage Hand. None of them would allow the Spirit to create a hand but they would allow it to hold and move things, interact with the world. They were also capable of channeling a lot of Force Mana but, only gradually.
They were designed to be precise and strong, not fast. That ant they would be useless in combat but still had the necessary Force to clamp sothing down.
For anything it couldn't quite do itself, it would be working with him and Art anyways so Felix wasn't worried.
The Spirit got less and less frustrated as ti went on and the constant aura of annoyance and frustration it was emitting from feeling like it had been tricked, wore away.
It also helped that the Spirit really did seem to love magic and engineering which helped push it through the frustration of learning to use the odd body Felix had designed.
Once it was moving around not quite with precision but less like a toddler, the Spirit's annoyance had been largely replaced with curiosity, "So… What are The Luminary Celestial and a Daemon doing here and what are you…" The Spirit looked at Felix. It didn't really use nas but the feeling it emanated for each was fairly easily decipherable.
Tam got up from the edge of the bed where she had been sitting, keeping watch and petting and very happy Nova in her lap, "I told you. These are my friends."
Felix nodded towards Nova with his chin, "The Daemon is my familiar. I'm a… was a human?"
"I know of humans. You are not one."
Felix shrugged.
"And…" The Spirit looked over at Nova, "That's your familiar?"
"Yup. Was a Sprite then a Spirit, now a Daemon, according to The System. If you need custom materials or weird shapes, she'll transmute sothing for us."
The Spirit noticeably winced into the Anima when Felix ntioned The System, glanced over at Tam then nodded, "You want to make things and you said you would provide materials?"
It seed like it wanted out of the deal but wasn't willing to cross anyone in the room. Felix ignored that for now, nodded and walked over to the workshop door. He opened it and the Spirit emanated genuine shock as it slowly wheeled forwards.
Felix walked in ahead of it and gestured towards Art with his hand, "This is Art. Listen to him if he tells you to do sothing. You'll be working together."
The Spirit rolled in and looked around, carefully picked up a few things and looked around, in shock both by the contents of the room and the fact that the room existed. It was clearly its first ti in the material world and the idea of a door segnting spaces was completely foreign to it, as was the idea of not projecting its every thought into its surroundings apparently.
"Oh, by the way. I guess you don't really have a na, do you Spirit?"
The Spirit looked at him and emanated confusion as Tam chid in from the other room, "Spirits don't need or use nas. You just refer to soone by emanating a feeling of who they are."
Felix sighed, "That's great and all but, it's a little inconvenient here where people use language to communicate. How about we just call you Eni."
Oh god. Why didn't I interrupt you… Grim groaned in Felix's mind accompanied by the giggling of multiple ntal Constructs.
What? It's not that bad… is it?
No. Honestly, it might be the least bad one you've co up with but I am in your brain. You just took the word Engineer and cut it up.
Alright fine. From now on, you can na everything yourself.
Felix left Art and so of his ntal Constructs to manage Eni while he went off to work on everything else he had to do.
Reviews
All reviews (0)