Chronicles of the True Wizard

Looking through the portal, Felix saw a room made of large stone blocks with dried and treated logs supporting the doorway and corners of the room. He stepped through and the portal closed behind him. The room he arrived in appeared to be a portal room. The only doorway in the room was easily as big as a garage door and had a series of rails that all conjoined a few meters outside the room before they all led into it, stopping right under his feet.

It seemed like the rails likely connected with rails on the other side of the portal when one was opened for that purpose.

Looking around, it seemed no one was around to greet him so Felix started wandering into the facility.

He followed the rails out of the portal room and into a large open room with rails winding through the space to various doorways, tunnels and lifts. He walked along one of the walls trying to see or hear anyone that may have been around but the whining, clanking and banging of the mine carts made it hard to hear anything else.

Eventually he found a doorway that seemed to lead to a living area, judging from the kitchen he could see through the doorway on the left side of the room and bunks in the room to the right. Across from him there was another door through which he finally saw another creature.

Standing at a table with just the left half of his body in view, Felix saw a large half giant man with a long messy hair and a bushy braided beard. He wore thick coveralls that were tied at the waist leaving his torso entirely exposed. Felix also spotted a small metal earrings and a set of rings from the side he could see.

[D - Uncommon] Arvo (Lvl 499)

The half giant was talking to someone out of view and only noticed Felix when he got within a few meters of the room. The man's head turned to him and his already existing frown deepened.

"And who in the fuck are you?" He tilted his chin in Felix's direction making it obvious to the rest of the room who he was talking to.

Felix continued to approach as he smiled and waved, "Felix. I'm here about a job to deal with creature's sieging a mining outpost? This outpost, I take it?"

The man's frown deepened which Felix didn't even think was possible, "Fucking Strib might be the cheapest fucker I ever worked for." The man sighed, "I've told him we don't need more guards, fuck it. If he doesn't cough up to deal with this shit soon, I quit."

Felix heard another voice from inside the room, "Arvo, you've been saying that for the last 6 months. We all need this job, you more than anyone."

The large man, Arvo, just grumbled.

Felix tentatively corrected their assumption, "I'm not a guard. Job said to stop the monsters for good."

Arvo rubbed his face with his hands, "Fucking Strib… Kid, what level did the job posting recommend?"

"A team of high D grades or low C grades." Felix hesitated to continue because he was confident it was going to further enrage Arvo, "Pay doesn't really match that recommendation though."

Arvo just sighed and fell into a chair behind him, "Go home kid. This one just ain't worth it."

Felix shrugged, "I mean, I can't make it worse can I? I'm only really risking my own life, why not let me try and maybe I get lucky. I don't get paid unless I accomplish something so…"

Arvo chuckled and dropped his head back, "You'd have to be really fucking lucky."

At that point another person leaned out around the door frame with a curious expression and as soon as they saw Felix, they winced. After a second they shrugged and beckoned him into the room.

As Felix finally walked into the room they were in, he saw a lot more people than he was expecting. There was Arvo, the halfling man who had beckoned him in as well as two groups of five people who were adventurers, judging from their equipment.

The adventurers were largely off to the sides of the room and seemed to be whispering to each-other. In the middle of the room, there was a large map of the area. The map wasn't traditional because it didn't cover much of the geography, but it looked to be an overlay of all the mining routes with the topology above. It was a confusing mess and Felix had no idea how any of them could read it without their own extensive experience of the area.

Looking around, Felix saw a few of the adventurers giggling a couple whispering and a few sighing when they finally identified him. He didn't really mind being underestimated as long as they didn't make his job any harder than it needed to be or interfere in any way.

Felix looked around but no one seemed particularly inclined to start talking so Felix turned to the halfling who had beckoned him in, "Mind catching me up to speed?"

The halfling man shrugged, "Sure. I'm Sanbin by the way, just call me San." He offered his hand.

Felix nodded and shook his hand, "Felix."

San pointed to the two groups in turn then to Arvo, "These are the adventuring groups the mine's owner hired as guards. This is Arvo, who you've already met. He's the mine's foreman."

Looking over at the two adventuring groups, Felix saw their levels fell between 400 and 600. San's level was just over 450.

San walked over to the side of the table, "We were just planning another expedition into the mines with our guards here. We can't have miners there constantly anymore so instead we choose a mine, go out as a team and the guards try to keep us safe."

Arvo grumbled something unintelligible but everyone seemed to be ignoring him so Felix followed suit, "When's the expedition?"

San shrugged, "A couple hours likely. Need to let the miners know, get the carts ready… you know."

Felix nodded, "Sure. I take it you have no leads on where the army's are coming from or why they're doing this?"

San shook his head and looked around the room. Everyone else either shrugged, shook their heads or just seemed uninclined to say anything.

"Mind if I tag along then?" Felix smiled to try and hide his mild annoyance.

Arvo grumbled again and San just shrugged, "More than welcome to. Try to listen to Arvo or the other guards when we get in there. When he isn't grumbling nonsense he is actually a good foreman."

Felix nodded having little intention of blindly following them. He wouldn't specifically disobey but he also wasn't as trusting of them as he was of Thezan. If he disagreed with their orders, he had no qualms with simply ignoring them.

San ran off to direct the rest of the miners to prepare themselves and Arvo followed shortly afterwards. The other adventuring groups didn't seem to have any desire to talk to him so he shrugged and sat down in one of the chairs.

He had better things to do than trying to get information out of people who didn't want to talk. He entered his Soul Garden and practiced on his rendition of Mihto's course. It was hard to create a combat course himself because he couldn't practice reacting to things when he knew where they were coming from at all times so instead, he had Grim create the course for him.

Once he had practiced for his usual 15 minutes of real world time, he shifted back over to his body and started working on practicing his mana control. He didn't want to head into his Pocket Home because he was worried they would leave without him and he didn't want to use his mana control to lift things in front of people so he focused on casting focus and speed.

Mostly out of annoyance, Felix threw in a couple hugely overpowered attack spell formations into his training just to throw the adventuring groups off. As soon as he formed one, he saw three people amongst the two groups flinch but by the time they turned to him, the spell was gone and he was already forming the next.

They shrugged but watched him warily then the next time he formed an attack spell they started to get more worried. The groups started whispering amongst each-other and Felix got some primal enjoyment out of seeing those three flinching every few minutes but none of them dared speak to him.

A few stared at him incredulously, a few with fear, a few looked like they had been challenged or almost dishonored and they all collectively backed up a few steps. Not one of them looked away from him for more than a few seconds though.

Felix had a hard time hiding a smile at first but quickly got used to hiding how much fun he was having scaring the adventurers. Two hours passed in no time and San beckoned them all to follow with a tilt of his head. Felix was the first to leave the room and he saw a long procession of mine carts containing tools as well as miners now filling the main room.

As Felix looked around, he noticed the vast majority of the miners were either half giants or halflings. He didn't ask why but he was almost surprised not to see any dwarves amongst the miners. In fact, thinking back he hadn't seen any dwarves at all which he found odd considering all the other races he had seen that mirrored fantasy from earth.

As he pondered the races of the multiverse, in a practiced fashion, one adventuring group headed to the front of the procession and the other took the rear. They set themselves up in their preferred formations then San looked over the whole procession and nodded to himself. Almost as an afterthought, he finally noticed Felix standing off to the side.

San shrugged and gestured towards the back so Felix nodded and walked over next to the adventuring group there. He noticed them bristle at him standing in and around their formation but he really didn't care.

The procession slowly proceeded down one of the rail tracks with the mine carts moving themselves courtesy of some simple force enchantments on their rear. Felix briefly examined them but found nothing worth stealing so he simply followed along.

No danger presented itself as the procession slowly rolled out of the outpost and into the cave, never having to expose itself to the outside. They climbed upwards at a glacial pace for a few hours before leveling out and the cave morphed into an actual mine.

Felix looked around and saw stones and various glints all around him but nothing he, nor Nova were interested in. She had looked around a few times but Felix felt her radiate disappointment every time. He chuckled to himself then pet her as he followed the procession.

As they got further into the mines, Felix noticed everyone, especially the guards, getting increasingly nervous and skittish. They looked around faster, reacted to small sounds, rested their hands on their weapons and generally seemed to be on edge.

While he didn't feel worried himself, he decided he wasn't an idiot so he filled his cloak with mana and prepared a few levels worth of defensive spells around him. He didn't prepare any attacks just yet to be sure none of the guards accidentally attacked him.

They arrived at their destination as the carts slowed to a halt and the miners collected their tools. Some had picks others had weird strips of thick plates attached by a string and some carried bags. Felix watched in fascination as they walked over to the walls and first used the picks to flatten. Then, they stuck the ribbons to the wall in a circle and filled them with mana. Felix immediately recognized the enchantment as softening the stone which proved correct as a few seconds later, the picks sunk much deeper into the stone.

For particularly difficult sections, they pulled small balls out of the bag and tossed them into the holes they had made with the help of some hand drills. The miners backed up and the balls exploded loosening the stone and allowing them to remove large chunks of it at a time.

The minerals they extracted got cleaned up a little then dropped into the now empty mine carts for a few hours until the miners decided to move forwards a few hundred meters.

They continued this process as the carts filled up until the remaining space for minerals dwindled and everyone's nerves mounted. Felix saw Arvo's frown deepening by the second as he barked out orders, inspected the mine and looked around skittishly.

Felix saw San standing off to the side waiting for more minerals he could inspect before they ended up in the carts and decided to approach him.

"Hey San, are there always attacks or just some of the time?"

San looked up and shook his head, "Always. Used to be sometimes, last few dekads it's been every. damn. time. Sometimes they manage to seize the haul, sometimes we fend them off."

Felix nodded and let him get back to work then wandered around and looked for any signs of enemies approaching. He looked forwards and backwards even wandering a kilometer from the miners in either direction, much to the chagrin of the adventurers.

He didn't see anything and started to doubt they would attack from the caves on either side. As he rejoined the miners, his theory was proven correct as he, and everyone else in the cave, noticed the temperature starting to rise very rapidly.

Felix frowned and looked around trying to figure out what was happening because cooking them alive in a cave seemed like a very easily countered attack. The adventurers formed a line facing both of the walls on either side of the caves as the miners huddled up next to the carts.

With an attack imminent, Felix started preparing some attack spells and set himself up behind the adventurers with the lower average level.

As he waited, the mine grew so hot, it visibly became difficult on the miners so Felix created a simple wind spell to cycle the air as much as possible. He opted for wind instead of cold because cold nodes were inherently inefficient and on a large scale like the mine, he didn't want to waste a ton of mana.

Over the course of the next few minutes, as the miners enjoyed the cool breeze and the adventurers fiddled, Felix noticed the walls themselves were getting hotter. Instead of getting hotter with the room, the walls started to redden and glow causing Felix to realize they were actually the source of the heat.

The walls continued to grow hotter and subsequently brighter until the stone became molten and dripped down the walls of the mine. Just a second later, molten rock sprayed out of the walls on either side in quick succession. Felix's cloak caught a few droplets and simply caused them to drop to the ground while the miners dodged as much as they could.

[D - Uncommon] Mountain Turtle (Lvl 604)

Turtles that were similar but distinct from the world boss Felix had fought back in the tutorial began crawling out of the molten holes in the walls and dropping to the ground.

Grim gasped mentally in realization, That's why they're turtles and not tortoises.

They swim through mountains?

Grim shrugged mentally, Seems like it.

The adventuring group in front of Felix engaged the turtles with a couple melee fighters cowering behind shields to block their molten spittle while the other's attacked wherever they found an opening.

Felix waited and watched at first, no one really seeming to notice him. He protected the miners a few times from stray attacks but they seemed to be managing on their own.

As he had expected, a few minutes after the turtles had tunneled into the room, a series of various jungle, mountain and cave creatures followed. There were large bugs, lizards, feline creatures, arachnids, scorpions and bat like creatures with various names and unique abilities.

Their levels were all lower than the turtles that had come before them but only by a small amount.

Now that Felix had a better idea of what was and what wasn't believable from the last mission he had done and just talking to others, he only held back a little bit. Instead of overpowering his Lightning Bolts to the point where he instantly killed them, Felix overpowered them just twice and used his spells to support the other groups. He was still doing a lot of damage, just judging from the reaction of those he hit but he mainly focused on keeping people alive and uninjured.

He mixed in some Force Beams to push enemies away and Shields to protect the innocents. He only occasionally squashed them against the walls but as much as the fight was easy for him, he could still see the intelligence in the creature's eyes. They used the turtles for cover, took strategic positioning and tried to whittle down the weakest member of the guards to create openings. The scorpions darted in and around corners, appearing and attacking in just a brief moment before darting away again while the bats mostly harassed everyone making it hard to focus.

None of what they did was random either, they coordinated everything.

The bats harassed at the same time as the turtle's sprayed magma. They worked together to create openings for the scorpions, felines and lizards to pounce in and do damage.

While impressive, it didn't result in more than a few broken bones, gashes and poisonings here and there. By the time Felix finished with his side, he glanced over his shoulder and chuckled as he watched Nova essentially playing with her food. The guards tried to attack her a few times but she just swatted them away and pounced on a new enemy.

Felix was grateful she was getting wise enough to realize who she could and who she shouldn't attack which made his job a lot easier.

Nova jumped onto one creature, ripped their neck out then hopped onto a turtles back and tried to rip them out of their shell using their tail. She killed it far before succeeding then morphed her own tail into a long spiked appendage that she used to crush a bat. She looked over and toasted a lizard with fire breath then happily clawed at some other creature to the side.

The guards on her side just backed off and gave her room once they realized she wasn't actually attacking them. It took her a minutes or so to kill everything she deemed an enemy at which point she started ripping into the corpses and consuming them ravenously.

Felix suspected she ate to satisfy the urges more than she desired their biological material considering how the creatures had been rather mundane, other than their intelligence.

Activating his rings, Felix consumed the bodies on his side of the mine causing a few of the adventurers to look at him funny. He had already confirmed there were some rare but not exceedingly rare skills that had similar effects at the library so he wasn't worried about someone torturing him for his secrets.

Nova cleaned up her side of the mine a couple minutes later at which point she morphed back into a dragon-kitten and hopped onto Felix's shoulder to nap.

Through the use of both of their skills, the mine was completely cleaned of animal corpses and viscera leaving behind just small blood spatters here and there from the miners and guards. Overall, they collectively didn't look much worse than they had before they had been attacked.

Felix himself was out almost a million mana but that had gone towards killing the creatures, powering his cloak, which left him completely untouched and protecting the miners.

He walked back over to the others and saw a few miners smile and nod in his direction as well as a few of the adventurer guards who offered him a slight nod of either respect or gratitude.

Arvo walked over with his arms crossed and looked down at Felix, "Alright. You're here to finally deal with this thing?"

Felix nodded, "That's the goal."

Arvo sighed, "I'll give you everything we know back at the outpost."

"Thanks."

Arvo nodded in respect then glanced over at the guards and sighed. He joined San and the rest of the miners then the carts started slowing moving backwards where they had come from.

The group bandaged their wounds, drank potions and repaired their armor as they followed the cart's slow progression back to the outpost.

Felix had been expecting it to be slow because of how full the carts were but he had forgotten that they had actually traveled upwards to get to the mine. It was therefore, a pleasant surprise for him when they reached the start of the decline and the cart started to roll down the hill much faster.

San steered the carts and rode the brakes so they didn't roll down the rails and out of control but the trip back took only a quarter of the time it took to get into the mine in the first place.

The miners took the carts off to individual rooms from which Felix heard the banging of metal and stone along with the roar of forges.

He followed Arvo into the chamber with the map while the guards, along with most of the injured miners, headed towards the room with the bunks.

Felix stood on the opposite side of the table to Arvo who leaned over using the table to support him with both hands. Considering he was a half-giant, he had to lean over pretty far and bend his knees, which did not look comfortable to Felix.

"Sorry I doubted you earlier. Thanks to you and Nova, your familiar I take it? That was the smoothest attack we've fended off in a long time."

Felix nodded, "Sure thing. You said you had more information?"

Arvo nodded and sighed then pointed at a spot on the map, "While we don't know the actual source of… whatever the fuck is happening, we do know of one camp."

Felix frowned, "A camp? They're animals, monsters, what do you mean camp?"

The half giant nodded, "Yeah, supposedly. I mean what I said. There are tents, wooden shelters, a palisade and everything. One of the guards a few terms ago followed the creatures for a while. They found this camp but then vanished a few days later when they tried to find another."

Felix nodded, "Alright, I'll check it out then. It's on the surface I take it? Is there a door out of here that doesn't lead to caves?"

Arvo led Felix to one of the rooms in the building and pointed to a ladder that climbed up to a trapdoor in the ceiling, "We had to seal the other exits a while ago so all we have left are chimneys with many thick grates, and that."

Felix nodded, "Thanks."

"Feel free to take a bunk to sleep for the night. Not sure what time it is on whatever planet you came from but here, it's the middle of the night right now. It's also really dark outside, no moon and not many stars in the sky."

Felix shrugged, "I'd like to take a look anyways."

Arvo shook his head and walked away, "Sure, whatever…"

Flying up to the trap door, Felix slid the large metal bar to the side and pushed it open then flew out and into the completely pitch black of night. He looked around and saw absolutely nothing save for the small square of light below him.

While it was completely possible for him to create light of his own, that would have attracted a lot of attention so instead, Felix closed the trap door below him and sat down next to it. With no one around to see anything, he used his mana control to lift tiny weights and write things with his quill.

Nova didn't seem to have any issue with the lack of light and she hopped off his shoulder and into the inky blackness of the night.

Lifting objects with his mana control didn't take much focus at all and even while he manipulated the quill to write things, he had attention to spare so he tried to create a night vision spell. His Persona would have been able to see something because of the enhancement to their eyes and Felix would eventually add them to his own body but he wasn't ready to do so yet. It was also a good challenge to create such a spell.

Theoretically, all he had to do was shift the light coming into his eyes into the visible spectrum. While he wasn't sure if there would be any UV light around, he was certain there was plenty of infrared light as a byproduct of the jungle's natural temperature. Unfortunately, he just didn't have the nodes he needed. He wasn't sure they even existed but either way, he didn't have them.

Even mentally perusing the node creation tome he had scanned from the Raven, he only found nodes that created mana not ones that altered the existing world around him.

He quickly put the idea aside for when he found the nodes or if he found another way to do something similar and focused his attention on mana computers.

Instead of pulling out the computer he had been working on most recently, Felix started to create a new computer from scratch, in his lap. What he was trying to do was confirm whether or not his latest idea had any potential. Using his incredibly fine mana control, Felix created the smallest transistors he could and connected them together to form a network of transistors.

He was just replicating an earlier design for a computer, one that performed a very simple set of addition, subtraction and multiplication and nothing else. While he had already created much more complicated computers, the challenge with this one was how small it was. In theory, this scale created huge problems for stability and precision but Felix had an ace up his sleeve, his ridiculous mana control.

For his first test, Felix manually held the entire design of the computer in his mind then held it steady as he powered it on. It took him almost an hour to get it to the point where he could hold the shape stable without affecting the calculations themselves by allowing the mana to freely flow through it.

Once he had achieved that, he didn't dare try to complicate the computer further but instead, he began suffusing it with the anima left over in his Soul Space. He quickly found that using the uncompressed anima did little to nothing but if he compressed it first as much as he could, the computer was almost stable.

It made slight errors and he could feel connections breaking every once in a while but it was already so close. As far as he could tell that meant his idea could work so Felix pushed ahead and started training his fine mana control exclusively.

He had already kick started the process when he had opened the mana control skill cube holding Grim but now, he wanted to go even further. He pulled out the skill cube and confirmed he could still complete it given a half hour then put it away and replaced it with the smallest droplet of mana he could control.

He then compressed that into a solid and carefully started to shave away at the exterior. As it grew smaller, he took breaks to simply move the piece around and get used to handling such a small amount then continued to shrink it when he felt comfortable.

At first he was making notable progress and he was becoming hopeful with how miniscule he was going to be able to make the computer. After a couple hours his progress notably slowed. By the time the sun started to rise over the horizon, finally breaking up the inky blackness that had surrounded him, he felt like he had gotten nowhere over the last hour or so.

He didn't have time to dwell on it or more likely, smash his head against the training until he got it. Daylight had arrived and so Felix could finally head out towards the camp.

He left as soon as there was any amount of light and flew towards the point Arvo had indicated though, all he had to work with was a direction.

As he flew up into the air, he saw the outpost below him from the outside for the first time and saw that it was a collection of a walls with a couple towers poking out all location in the valley between a few large mountains. Considering they had climbed to reach the mines, Felix assumed the mines had to be in the mountains.

Felix darted out of the range of the outpost and immediately felt a tug on his soul from his bond with Nova. He headed towards it, more than a little shocked, and found her just a few kilometers ahead of him. As he approached, she jumped into the air and met him midflight then sent him a wave of memories from last night.

She had sought out and found the camp Arvo had pointed out while Felix was training in the dark. She hadn't engaged them but she had gotten a good view of the entire camp, having circled around and flown over it.

It was a little confusing at first to see from Nova's perspective but his own time practicing his matter senses had helped tremendously. On top of that, as Felix processed the memories and translated them in his own mind, he gained insights into his own matter senses progressing them even further.

Once he had gone through everything Felix asked Nova to guide him to the camp and together they flew off almost directly away from the rising sun.

Felix could finally see the planet around him and as he looked around, he saw an endless jungle filling the valley between mountains that rose up like islands from the green sea below.

Though he could see the horizon in the distance, it was partially obscured by a low hanging fog making anything further than a dozen kilometers a blurry mess. Even flying higher into the air though, there was nothing but mountains and jungle below a seemingly infinite fog as far as he could see.

The planet was a little warmer on average when compared to Telviras and the gravity was about twice as strong but it still didn't affect Felix much.

Unfortunately, with the cover of night gone, Felix was spotted far before he ever even got close to the camp.

Flying over the jungle, a swarm of various bird creatures with different sizes, shapes and colors came racing towards him from every side. Despite all being so distinct from each-other, they worked together and synchronized themselves perfectly such that they executed coordinated maneuvers.

They dove together to claw at Felix while another group pelted him with blasts of wind and others cut off his escape by dropping rocks and logs. He dodged the wind and deflected the rocks but his cloak had to handle the talons. As fast as Felix was, the sky was not his domain and the birds outpaced him in every way except in a long distance, straight line race.

After recovering from the first attack, Nova hopped off Felix's back and plummeted to the ground as she morphed her body. Felix didn't get to watch though as a particularly large bird flew just a few meters over his head and bellowed out a screech that vibrated his body as it passed.

His cloak wasn't designed to do anything against sound so it hit him full force.

Luckily its only real effect was to throw him off. Luckily, the subsequent blast of wind that followed, though he was stunned, was automatically and completely neutralized courtesy of his cloak at the cost of just a few tens of thousands of mana.

It was at that point that he heard a screech of pain from a short distance away and Felix recovered from the sound attack long enough to look up and smile.

He saw a beautiful blue phoenix completely ripping through the birds attacking him like it was nothing. Not that Felix needed the help, he was having fun analyzing how smart they really were and testing their coordination and adaptability. Still, he appreciated Nova's desire to help and protect him.

Wrapping himself in a Shield of Force, Felix turned himself around and took out the birds flying around him one by one as they flew closer to him. He didn't bother chasing them down because his goal was actually to follow them, physically or even just visually as it would have been a huge help to him finding the camp.

It only took him, along with Nova, a couple of seconds to reduce the flock down to half its original size at which point they all split off and dove into the jungle below at various points.

Felix had Nova return to him and she perched herself on his shoulder, her long tail feathers trailing along his back.

Damn, they were smart enough to obfuscate the camp's location. Nova, you can still guide us towards the camp, right?

She chirped in assent and flew off ahead of Felix so he could follow.

No more birds flew out of the jungle to harass them and, much to Felix's dismay, Grim assured him that the soul trick he had used to scout in the tutorial would have little to no effect on D grades. It was just something that worked on really low level creatures who's instincts were completely untrained.

Felix really wished he had a better idea of how to create an illusion spell but the only thing he knew about them was the spell form he copied from The Raven: Finras' shop. That spell was far too complicated for him to raw cast though and he hadn't even begun to start dissecting it.

It was too late at this point either way, they already knew he was coming. As soon as Nova, with Felix in tow, started to descend towards the jungle, it was obvious that the camp was also prepared for them.

Giant boulders, with good but not great aim, shot up through the jungle canopy in their direction. They easily dodged out of the way but as they got closer, the stones turned into wooden javelins and their aim was much better.

Nova deftly dodged them all but Felix on the other hand was hit by a couple but his cloak protected him from taking any damage. As they got within a few dozen meters, a huge swarm of insects closed in on them from all sides. Felix wasn't actually sure how his cloak would react to them so he slowed down and told Nova to start circling upwards.

As soon as the swarm bunched itself up, Felix let loose with a wide cone of billowing flames. Nova thought it looked terribly fun and couldn't help herself from joining in with a stream of fire from her own beak after a cheerful and sing song chirp.

Together they destroyed most of the swarm and sent the rest back into the safety of the jungle.

Felix swapped out the Shield of Force surrounding him with a Mana Shell then let himself drop towards the canopy. Nova dropped herself as well which was an odd sight, seeing a bird dropping straight down like a rock though Felix suspected she was increasing the weight of her body.

The Mana Shell protected Felix's body from the leaves that were sharp and the branches that were thick and hard. Nova just didn't care at all and seemed to be loving it as she punched a hole right through the canopy and fell halfway to the jungle floor before she caught herself and circled back up to Felix amongst the branches.

Hopping from branch to branch, his training with Mihto helping immensely, Felix headed towards the camp as per Nova's direction.

The javelins and bugs had ceased to bother them but now that they were in the jungle itself, they were well within the range of other creatures.

First was a group of chimps that pelted them from the tree tops around. Felix completely ignored them as they were just an annoyance and hunting them down was a waste of time. Then he felt something sneak up on him followed shortly afterwards by a shooting pain in his calf. Looking down, he saw a dark green snake wrapped around his thigh with four fangs buried in his flesh.

He didn't bother killing it at first but once it started to interfere with his jumping from branch to branch, he reached down and squeezed its head until it popped. The venom was completely ineffective despite how cool Felix thought it was.

It used a combination of two separate venoms in tandem. One tried to relax his muscles while the other attacked his cells as they were put to sleep.

Neither were remotely close to doing anything to his body as his tolerance to and the defenses he'd built for toxins completely neutralized them. He was even converting most of it into energy which, was unnecessary but, nice. The bite itself did steal a small sliver of his health but it was nothing he was concerned about. With his energy topped up, his Vitality would seal and completely heal the wound within just a few minutes.

Nothing else assaulted them before they spotted the camp between the trees and vines. There was a palisade enclosing a large area in an artificial clearing in the middle of the jungle. Some of the stripped jungle trees were being used as posts for the tents while others had obviously gone into the palisade.

The tents themselves varied greatly. Some were enclosed on the sides and the top, others were just a canopy and some had large gaping slits parallel to the suns trajectory throughout the day. There were even some mostly wooden structures but they were simple in shape and design, barely log houses.

All the creatures of the camp seemed to be ready for their approach as looking down, Felix saw a veritable army of animals all in formation. There were chimp creatures riding lizards at the front wielding spears and shields. Behind them were larger apes with four arms each holding a different crude spear or axe.

Finally in the rear there were rows of javelins and another set of four armed apes. In the very back wearing a complete set of plate armor, though not necessarily a cohesive set, was a large Gorilla.

[D - Rare] Gorilla King Gormoth: Camp AG Commander (Lvl 760)

The rest of the animals were mostly rare with a few uncommons in the mix and their levels were all below Gormoth's but still in the 6 to 7 hundreds. Nova circled around deftly tilting her wings back and forth to avoid the javelins blasting through the sky around her.

Felix dodged the easier ones and had a Force spell to deflect a number of others. The rest bounced off his Mana Shell harmlessly.

Unbothered by completely ineffective attack, Felix floated over the army a few hundred meters back and tried to decide which spell he wanted to use most. He was really starting to wish he had a Chain Lightning spell once again.

That wasn't an option currently though so he tried to decide between Fire and Force mostly. He was thinking Fire Balls would be a good bet but he didn't want to spread the army out to much, not when they had already bunched themselves up so tightly for him. That left either thin beams of force or superheated balls of fire with little to no force pushing outwards.

The range on his force beams was low so he settled on fire and slowly dropped down towards the army.

The mounted spearmen in the front adjusted themselves and corrected their posture, the mounts eager to pounce forwards but held back by something. As soon as his feet touched the ground, Felix dropped his Mana Shell because it was annoying when he was grounded and Gormoth roared.

That appeared to have been the signal they were waiting for so the army charged towards Felix. He quickly sent permission to Nova to do whatever she wanted and prepared three identical spells then simply waited for the mounted combatants to reach him.

They wouldn't be the most efficient spells he had ever created but the quick adjustments he had made to the Flame Thrower spell proved to be well worth the cost. As columns of fire blasted into the army, the superheated flames became inescapable as a simple Force spell lifted and pulled everything inside.

Felix swept the flames back and forth slowly, making sure he had cleared out a line before sweeping over to the next enemy. He heard Gormoth bellow out another roar, an audibly distinct roar, not Felix had no idea what they meant, he just suspected they meant something.

A few seconds later he figured out what it was as teams of panthers, jaguars and tigers worked together to flank him from the edge of the clearing. A few of them got right up close to him and tried to bite down but found their jaw stopped by small blue hexagons that held their fangs back.

Felix quickly used the last bit of his focus to form and cast a spell he had designed for his Persona and created a burst of Force and Fire all around him.

The panther trying to bite his arm was launched into the air, with no friction to hold them back, and the other feline predators near him were charred and sent tumbling.

Now that the army was charging at him, Felix pushed himself up and into the air a few meters so he could get a better view of the battlefield and caught sight of Nova. She was still in the form of a phoenix and was busy dive bombing the four armed apes in the back. As she flew down and got close to them, she morphed her beak into a spear head and aimed for their shoulders or neck before darting off back into the air.

Looking just in front of himself, the front line had been mostly obliterated. Only a quarter of them actually lay dead either charred husks or piles of ash but, the rest were all scrambling. Gormoth bellowed out roars no doubt intended to be orders but none of them seemed to be doing anything orderly. They all ran in different directions, the mounts kicking their riders off into the distance, the chimp like creatures dropping their weapons and trying to climb the palisade to escape certain demise.

The middle layer of infantry, the four armed apes with crude looking melee weapons, just looked lost. Some of them, stupidly, ran up to meet their front line and assist while others simply looked around confused because both in front and behind them, they were being torn apart.

The feline stealth squads kept trying to distract Felix by flanking him but once he was aware of them, he simply used his remaining focus to take them out with a couple overpowered Lightning Bolts each.

Once the front line was almost entirely dealt with and nowhere to be seen, Felix dropped the three modified Flame Throwers and simply floated forwards. He used Lightning Bolts to deal with the scattered infantry that still seemed to be frozen, confused or just lost and helped Nova finish off the backline.

With nothing left between him and Gormoth, the Gorilla King roared and leapt into the air in Felix's direction. Nova quickly asked Felix if she could help and he didn't really want to say no when he felt the excitement leaking through along with her query.

The loss in experience wasn't going to make or break him and there were plenty of other camps they could split up and take out individually. For now he wanted to fight with his familiar and was really just hoping to find a clue as to what the hell was going on.

Felix darted to the side with a burst of Force right before the Gorilla King landed then retaliated with a quick Lightning Bolt while they were still unable to dodge effectively.

The metal armor mostly nullified the attack, providing a safe route around its body so Felix relented and dropped the Lightning Bolts he had already prepared. He had kind of just forgotten about that and didn't plan around it so he just switched over to Force Blasts and Flame Throwers.

He didn't bother with the modified version of the Flame Thrower because there was only one enemy in front of him and he didn't think trying to pull Gormoth in would do anything.

Now that he was closer, Felix got a good look at Gormoth and what he was wearing. He had already recognized the plate armor as cobbled together but what he hadn't spotted was a couple of rings along with a pair of greaves that appeared magical simply due to their glimmer in his mana sight. Gormoth also had a massive and impressively crafted maul in his hands and wore a pendant of shining blue.

Most interesting to Felix though was the circlet Gormoth wore that had an eyeball placed right over his forehead. Not even a jewel, the eye was a real squishy sphere that could have easily been ripped out of a humans face, were it not for the fact that it appeared to still be functional. As the animal army crumbled around Gormoth, the eye darted about looking, seeing and focusing on the battlefield.

Felix made a snap decision and dropped the Flame Throwers, using all of his focus for Force Bombs and Beams.

Gormoth looked around frustrated that he hadn't killed Felix with his leap but the eye on his circlet immediately locked onto Felix's position.

Felix fired off a Force Bomb mostly to see what it would do and winced when he saw Gormoth stumble back a single step but otherwise recover after just a brief moment.

The Gorilla King stepped forwards and whipped his maul over his head then slammed downwards. Felix dashed to the side with a mobility spell then released a Force Beam at Gormoth's knees. As soon as it hit, his balance was off and Nova capitalized, vanishing from off in the distance with just a trail of fire marking her path.

Gormoth toppled over, actually launched a couple meters from Nova's hit but he rolled into it and got to his feet then instantly leapt at Felix as the eye on the circlet tried to keep track of Nova.

Wanting to make it more interesting, this time when Gormoth slammed down, Felix stepped to the side just a meter or so and punched upwards towards Gormoth's face. Instead of actually making contact with him, Felix had simply attached his Force Beam spell form to his fist and released it mid arc.

Gormoth's head snapped to the side and Nova dug her claws into the back of his head then vanished just a moment later in a trail of fire.

Felix lightly leapt backwards a few meters, no need to augment his jump and let loose a Force Bomb at Gormoth's feet right as he swung his axe horizontally, twisting his torso to build momentum.

The Force Bomb sent his swing trailing upwards and over Felix's head as he ducked then Nova dropped down and pecked at Gormoth's real eyes.

As soon as Gormoth recovered, Felix waited for Nova to dart away again and she looked upwards but then nothing happened. She got half a meter or so off his face but she was moving glacially slowly.

Felix felt a pang of worry, his own mixed with the torrent of emotion coming from Nova's soul bond as he saw the eye on the circlet lock onto Nova's form. Gormoth reached upwards with his left hand, as if possessed and tried to grab Nova.

In that moment, Felix just reacted as a beam of significantly overpowered Fire, Force and Lightning all collided with Gormoth's neck, launching the body backwards.

Felix thankfully saw Nova glide around in a circle and land on his shoulder, evidently exhausted. He quickly jumped over to Gormoth but saw that everything between his shoulders, including his chest, head and the circlet along with it, were gone. Felix had completely disintegrated them.

He sighed in relief, annoyance and acceptance. It was worth it to make sure Nova didn't get killed and considering how tired she was, that had been a real possibility. He had felt her fear and that had been what caused him to react for the most part. He was quite satisfied with his casting speed though. Fully constructing and casting the Fire and Lightning spells from scratch had happened in just a couple hundredth of a second, the fastest he had ever cast them before.

With Gormoth dead, the rest of the animals scrambled off into the jungle and Felix didn't bother chasing any of them down. He was here for levels though so he did kill any that were still in range of a Lightning Bolt.

Ding You have slai-

Felix dismissed the message before it could finish. He could check his levels afterwards and he was more than capable of basic math.

As he searched the camp, he questioned Nova on what had happened.

It was a confusing explanation to parse because her idea of mana was the balls Felix had given her and they were her base unit. As she explained that using the Phoenix ability that created a trail of fire used a lot of mana and she had run out, Felix saw in his mind, a pile of corpses. From that pile, one corpses floated into the air then turned into a ball. That ball then turned into a stream of fire.

She then went on to explain that she could eat bodies to get more balls but that just caused Felix to frown. He quickly questioned her some more but only grew more confused.

Does Nova not have a mana pool?

Grim shrugged, How the hell am I supposed to know that?

She seems to be pulling leftover mana from the corpses in her soul space to power everything…

Is that a problem?

Not on its own. She also doesn't seem to have much mana. I think I need to go buy her a battery to use as a mana core. Speaking of which, I should buy you a new one too.

Definitely won't say no to that, not that I much mana right now. You gonna try to make them yourself?

Not these ones. I'll start working on that either in the next few terms or more likely at Eramith. Not enough time right now.

To keep that from happening again, Felix fed Nova as many single use batteries as he had, much to her delight, and promised to fix her mana issues in the future. She didn't really seem to understand what he was saying but her confusion was laced with excitement nonetheless.

Having thoroughly searched the scorched remains of the camp, Felix didn't find anything of value. Even Gormoth's greaves and rings were basically trinkets. He pocketed them to sell later but there was nothing of note.

He was starting to realize the circlet was probably his best bet. Considering how smart all the creatures were though, he was pretty sure there was something else at play because Gormoth was the only one with a circlet.

He absorbed all the bodies and souls that had been left behind and examined a few of them but had a hard time figuring out what was different when he didn't have a baseline to compare against.

On a whim, Felix decided to start searching for the next camp by circling the outpost and spiraling outwards. Nova was exhausted even though Felix had restored her mana as it seemed the phoenix form took more out of her than just mana. He quickly got Grim's permission for Felix to place her in his Soul Space as she was smart enough now to not try and eat Grim.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

It was also Felix's Soul Space so realistically it was impossible for her to do something he didn't want her to. Just like Grim, she too didn't seem to be bothered from being inside his soul at all, no doubt a product of their soul bond.

Flying over the jungle, Felix arrived at another mountain, one separate from the ones adjacent the outpost and circled around the outside. As he passed a particularly large cliff side, he spotted a number of tents buried in the rocky nook.

As soon as he spotted the tents, the residents of the camp spotted him.

He was once again attacked by birds but this time he didn't need to follow them home so he simply ignored them and shot himself into the middle of the camp.

Felix slowed his fall so he didn't injure himself but simulated an explosion of Force from his landing point anyways then jumped from outcropping to outcropping, killing everything in sight.

It didn't take long for the leader of the camp, a mountain troll to make his presence known. As soon as Felix saw him, his theory was confirmed as he spotted the very same circlet with a creepy eye inserted right over the forehead.

This one Felix made sure he preserved which became an annoying endeavor as soon as the Troll realized the fight was futile and tried to commit suicide by jumping off the cliff face.

Felix raced down towards the corpse and absorbed it into the ring then caught the circlet just before it hit the ground but as soon as he turned it over, the eye was already shriveled and dead.

Damnit.

He flew off towards the next camp, this time ready to keep the commander alive while he investigated the circlet but as soon as the commander was obviously defeated, the eye shriveled all on it's own.

Fucking…

Nova had recovered a few camps in and Felix felt waves of excitement as she danced around his Soul Space sniffing at everything in sight. Surprisingly to Felix, she recognized Grim and nuzzled up against him in affection, causing him to noticeably tense up.

She could try and eat me you know.

Felix just chuckled in response. He did remove Nova from his Soul Space shortly thereafter though and told her to be safe as she flew off towards the mountains on her own. She agreed not to use the Phoenix form relatively quickly as it had apparently scared her more so than it had Felix.

The sun began setting just a few camps later so Felix found a nice little cave in the mountain nearest him and settled in for the night. He spent a few hours trying to make more progress on shrinking his mana control until he finally had a break through.

Suffusing my cells with my soul hugely increased my control over them. So the same should work here… in theory?

Felix tried it. He started by compressing some of the anima he had in his Soul Space, affinizing it this time, then he merged that with exactly one point of mana. Now, he split the mana into two, then split those in two again. He repeated the process of splitting them all into two until he had gotten noticeably further than he had before.

He continued until he couldn't accurately halve the little pieces of mana then tried to move to the next step, turning that miniscule bit of mana into a transistor in a mana computer. Doing so was very simple, doing so with the necessary degree of precision so it remained stable was very hard.

At first he just connected two together then he tested them as much as he could. He then attached another one onto the end and thoroughly tested it. By the time he hit a hundred transistors, the first flaw finally revealed itself and he had to carefully dissect the entire thing until he found the one that was flawed, then he continued.

The further he got, the faster the flaws appeared which was ironically a good thing. He was more likely to catch flawed transistors and ended up finding flaws in transistors that he had added way back at the start. This accelerated the process and also made testing much easier. Now he simply had to run very complicated operations that hit every transistor which were easier to come up with when the computer was more capable.

He had gotten to a few thousand by the time the sun rose and Felix carefully placed the prototype into his soul space so he could continue at a later time.

Hey Grim, remember when we talked about stealing memories?

Yeah.

You mentioned necromancy?

Yeah…

Felix sensed Grim's hesitation, I just don't see another way to track… whatever this thing is behind the eyeballs, down.

How about you start with what you can already do.

What do you mean?

Well… I don't know, there isn't anything written or stored in me related to this so everything I say is theoretical. The soul contains experiences right?

And I get rid of those when I soul harvest so I could just not?

Yeah… maybe?

Huh, that's easy. Could I do that to learn languages and stuff too then?

Not this. This isn't reading memories really. It's reading experiences. You would need actual memories for that. The soul as I understand it is just for experiences. Significant experiences.

Right but learning a language could be a significant experience for someone? Maybe they can finally talk to someone they love or something.

Yes that is significant, but learning each and every word is not. Think about this, you have a martial artist that was pushed to learn by his parents. He enters the tournament of his life and wins. This is a big significant moment for him. If you were to read their experiences from their soul, my guess is you would glimpse the big moments of the fight, glimpse the parents being proud, standing over the opponent, begin awarded. The emotions of triumph, frustration, accomplishment, relief, pride and everything else. If you dug deeper into the martial art, you would probably find spars they lost, times they got hurt, times they finally mastered something they had been struggling with. You'd have to dig a lot deeper to find basic, fundamental knowledge, if it ever existed in the first place within their soul.

Ah, shit. Well… alright. I should be able to find this though right? At least, if my theory is right and something happened to them, someone gave them the circlets, then that should be significant. The point they became smart, right?

Maybe?

Any theories on whether I could do it on a live subject?

It would be torture…

Yeah but, I was thinking of trying it on the circlets.

Oh, I see. Maybe?

I mean I don't see any other way they could work, other than being soul bound.

Could be System Fuckery

Damn. Yeah you're right. Man, fuck The System. Stupid fucking System Fuckery.

Flying past the large sheer side of a mountain Felix glanced over and movement in a cave caught his eye.

Just over ten minutes later he stood over the body of a tusked lizard creature that had been the commander of the camp with streams of dark crimson and golden white pouring into his hands on either side. He had the passive Soul Reap skill disabled and shifted his consciousness inwards. This time there hadn't been an escape so there weren't any stragglers to attack him while he worked. He also had the cloak to protect him now so, he wasn't particularly worried.

Felix took the soul of a random creature from the camp and started dissecting it. Normally he found the experiences and instincts then dumped them, now he specifically sought them out. He found some significant experiences but most of it was garbage. Animals were mostly satisfying themselves in various ways and their emotions tended to not be very complex.

As he had expected though, there was an experience of it becoming smart. He wasn't quite reading or watching the experiences but he was able to get a general sense of the experience. This one was just filled with pain followed by clarity.

Taking the tiny piece of its soul that contained the memory, Felix compressed it down then treated it like it was a soul gem in the library. He pushed himself into it and let the experience wash over him.

He was an animal, a large bat and he was king of the cave. There were other bats in the cave but they were lesser creatures. He was the one that reproduced the most and he was the one that killed the most. He was strong, he was satisfied and he was happy.

Hanging in his cave waiting for prey, something new steps in. Something he had never heard before. It's big, it's covered in hair and it walks with purpose. It approaches. It's under him.

He releases from the ceiling and darts for the exit, he feels it. He is weak, he is helpless.

Even before his body is crushed in its hand he knows he'll be caught. He's pulled in and it stares into his eyes. It carefully drops a liquid into his mouth. It tastes awful.

Suddenly pain. Pain everywhere. Body hurts. Head is squeezing. Head hurts. Head hurts a lot. Head hurts the most.

Pain lasts for days. Can't get used to pain. Pain is constant.

Head feels… good. Head feels bigger, more capable. He hears the others around him waking up as well. He sees the creature that created him. He sees the commander and he knows he must follow.

The commander is smart and the commander will lead. He will lead us to be powerful, to be smart and to be clear.

The memory ends and Felix returns to himself, taking a second to suppress the urge to screech in order to hear and therefore see things then bite something's neck to initiate copulation.

He half entered all the other memories, seeing much of the same thing until he finally decided it was enough and turned to the commander's soul.

It didn't take long for him to find the memory he was looking for now that he had context and reference as to how the process worked. Felix only partially dove into the memory so he didn't lose himself.

So sleepy is The King of the Cave. His teeth still dripping with viscera from the creature he had hunted. The creature looked strong but it was weak. The hunt was easy. Itch in The King of the Cave's side. He rolls over and drags his back along the big rock next to him. Satisfaction. Sleep.

Awake. Danger nearby. Nothing The King of the Cave can't handle. He rolls over to his feet and stretches himself out. The King of the Cave has nothing to fear, he is King.

He stretches his mouth wide to expose his nose. He breathes in, he smells them. Danger.

The King of the Cave approaches the danger. He prowls in its direction, ready to introduce it to The King.

Suddenly pain. The King is slammed into the big rock next to him. He can't move. His body hurts.

Pain in his mouth. His jaw is being wrenched open. Liquid. Terrible taste. Nothing like delicious blood.

Pain everywhere. Head hurts. Head exploding.

The King is reborn. Now The King is smart, he can direct the other creatures of the cave and they will listen. He looks around and sees others writhing. Surely being awakened just as he had been.

He looks around and sees the one who awakened him. A large bear creature with a crown holding an eyeball.

The memory then continues with the bear commander who had turned The King directing him on what to do and how to act then eventually gifting him his own crown.

Finally The King has his own crown. Now all would kno-

Welcome to the fold.

The King looks around. These wor-

You are Commander GZ.

GZ? That's wrong, he is The King not a Commander. King of th-

You will obey me. I made you smart.

It was the bear, not this voice in his head, who aw-

I gave him that elixir. I made it. You are mine now. OBEY.

The King bowed to the voice. The King would follow.

The rest of the events were less significant so Felix didn't really find anything of value lurking around.

That's progress I guess.

Flying out and finding another camp, Felix found much of the same in their souls. The creatures were turned by the commander who had in turn been turned by some other commander. Unfortunately he had no way of finding the previous commander and following the chain so he was left with his only real option of just hunting down camps and exterminating them in the hopes they knew something.

As much as he wanted to perform the same interrogation on the circlets, they seemed to be destroying themselves far too quickly at the moment.

He was trying to figure out how to do it, possibly by removing and crushing the circlet before it had time to destroy itself. Or by destroying it without being seen so it couldn't retract it's soul back to the host.

Felix had been flying somewhat randomly for the last few days and had ended up farther west of the outpost than he would have liked to be. Judging from the birds that seemed to be watching him from afar as he flew though, he didn't think he was necessarily in the wrong place.

At some point over the jungle, those birds that had been flying along with him, tracking his movements all suddenly dove into the jungle in tandem. In an unexpected turn of events though, they all dove into the same general area instead of obfuscating their destination.

That's the most obvious trap I've ever seen.

Felix immediately dove after them. He made sure to erect his Mana Shell on top of his cloak and prepared a very overpowered burst of Fire from his own body.

He flew through the canopy of the jungle and broke through the high branches. He tore vines apart and blasted through the ferns as he followed the flock forwards.

Flying through the jungle, weaving through the trees was great practice but it did result in him almost losing the birds a few times. Luckily they were obviously leading him somewhere so they would loop back around to make sure he followed them.

They slowly started to fly closer to the ground so Felix prepared himself for the trap, ensuring his Mana Shell was active and the burst of Fire spell form was ready.

Right as Felix darted around a particular tree, a loose net of chains was dropped onto his head and suddenly he was pulled into the ground. He let it happen and didn't do anything yet, just waited and pretended to be surprised. He put on, what he thought to be, a great show of struggling against the chains.

As he was pressed into the ground, he looked around and saw that he was right on the edge of a clearing. Felix quickly pulled something out of his Soul Space and started to fill it with mana but kept it under his cloak and out of sight, just in case, as he was dragged over towards the clearing.

They passed through the tree line and Felix saw, standing before him, at least 5 camp's worth of creatures though it could have been twice that because he couldn't see how far the army stretched in any direction.

He saw some interesting creatures he had never seen before, some flying fire serpents, large poisonous frogs and some massive bugs.

Holding the chain net were a group of five gorilla looking creatures except their lower half had four legs and they were covered in scales. They were like lizard gorilla centaurs and Felix honestly, just found them confusing.

He didn't initially see any commanders but they quickly revealed themselves, a group of five walking through the front lines of the army and surrounding Felix.

One in particular, a large bright green frog, looked to be the leader even amongst the group of commanders.

[D - Special] Ra-i-a-i-a-i: Camp Q Commander (Lvl 962)

That's… a name… I guess.

It's level and rarity definitely helped with the feeling of it being the leader. The other commanders, some kind of jaguar, a tiger that stood on it's hind legs, a parrot with four wings and finally a small and, frankly, adorable monkey stood behind them.

The large frog looked over at the monkey commander who nodded and walked towards Felix with a circlet in his hands.

Oh, perfect.

The Lizard Gorilla things holding his net pulled it taught because they thought it meant he couldn't move and the monkey walked right up to him. The monkey carefully lowered the crown towards his head and Felix just waited.

Right as it was about to touch his head, Felix reached up with hand and grabbed it then stuck it into his Soul Space while simultaneously casting the spell he had been holding at the ready. A portal suddenly appeared right below Felix and he waved at the commanders as he fell through.

He quickly stowed the portal mold he had used to create the spell as he fell a few meters before catching himself and dropping a stream of Fire Balls down on the army below. He circled around and made sure to hit a large number of them then switched over to Flame Throwers because they were more efficient.

The commanders took a few minutes to figure out what had happened and during that time, their armies were sent scrambling. They held up much better than the first camp he had faced, no doubt forewarned of his arrival and techniques but they still fell prey to fear and indecision.

They tried to rally and launch counter attacks but Felix just dropped to the ground as the birds surrounded him and finally let loose the burst of Fire he had been holding onto.

A giant explosion centered on Felix completely wiped out a huge chunk of the enemy forces and cleared a massive radius around him.

Whoops, that may have been a little excessive.

The commanders finally saw their opening and leapt to engage. The standing tiger being the first to arrive tried to hold him down with its claws while the Parrot attempted to hit him with Lightning Bolts. None of them even got close to touching him with his cloak's enchantment active but they were annoyingly bright.

The jaguar quickly joined the tiger trying to hold him down and the frog leapt over in an attempt to swallow him. Though the tongue had no way to stick to him, Felix used a Force spell to make it seem like it had gotten him anyways, shooting himself into the frog's mouth.

He immediately felt its insides fill with a toxic gas that he promptly took a big deep breath of then recreated the same overpowered Fire burst spell except this time, with Force alone.

A second later, the frog splattered all over the other commanders and temporarily blinded them allowing Felix to take out the tiger and the jaguar with a barrage of Lightning Bolts.

He left the Parrot be for now but kept an eye on it so it didn't get away from him as he proceeded to roast the rest of the army.

Suddenly he was struck with a massive and very arrow like object, or rather this cloak stopped one using an absurd amount of mana and he looked around in shock. He finally spotted the monkey commander way off in the distance reloading a large crossbow.

Felix shot over towards the monkey faster than they could move out of the way and purposefully collided with it, grabbing hold of it's neck as it tried to scurry off.

He squeezed his hand around its neck as he cast a Lightning spell in his palm, completely frying the small creature then he continued wiping out the rest of the combined camps.

It didn't take long before the parrot realized its lightning was useless and resorted to its talons at which point Felix simply killed it.

The rest of the army scattered off in every direction and he briefly chased as many of them as he could but didn't commit to flying off very far.

Once again he found some items but nothing more than some Common and Uncommon trinkets lying around. He put out the remaining fire in the camp so the entire jungle didn't burn down then turned his attention to the circlet in his Soul Space.

He had luckily been fast enough to stow it before it was deactivated and now he had it trapped. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with it though because if he let it out, it would deactivate. If he removed its soul, it would be obliterated. His only real option was to try and read its experiences without removing its soul so he attempted just that.

Reaching into the circlet and specifically the eye, Felix forced his consciousness inwards. He thought of it like using a memory crystal except instead of letting him in, he had to force his way in against its will.

The eye didn't have much will in it but pushing his consciousness into a body that didn't belong to him was still difficult. His soul was monstrous but it seemed all it wanted to do was protect and defend, piercing the barrier that was a body and exerting his will was difficult and actually felt awkward.

It took him a couple dozen minutes to overcome his own soul's aversion to it and finally caught glimpses of the experiences in the eyeball's soul. It was nothing like watching a memory, all he got were flashes and images.

He saw hands. Floating hands everywhere. Books. A stone building. Bones. A perfectly round room. A window through which he saw a jungle and mountains. Alchemy set. Rituals.

There was nothing else Felix could ascertain and the eyeball on the circlet burst like a balloon. The soul that leaked out as a result, was instantly obliterated as it entered his Soul Space.

Well. That's… progress.

Felix had Grim make sure all of the images he had seen were preserved then flew off into the air in search of either a camp or anything he had seen from the flashes.

By the time the sky darkened to unreasonable levels of visibility, Felix chose a tree and sat on one of its branched then pulled out the mana computer he had been working on.

Instead of continuing to slowly grow it as he had been the previous night, Felix decided to try something new. In order to realize his goal of making this into a much larger and actually usable computer, he had to somehow automate its growth.

Felix only really had one idea on how to do so. He started by completely removing a single transistor, leaving a gaping hole. Then, he provided raw unshaped mana to the computer.

The mana was almost instantly sucked into the hole and morphed into the shape of a transistor causing Felix to smile.

He then removed a large chunk of transistors and ripped their mana free then pulled some anima out of his Soul Space and compressed it down to the right density. He combined the mana that had been in the computer with the anima from his Soul Space and manually mixed it all together.

His hope was that the experience or instinct to form and hold a transistor shape would be passed around to the rest of the anima. Unfortunately, when he provided it with mana, it formed a loose blob at best.

Instead of scrapping that portion though, Felix took it and started to dissect it, ripping away anything within the anima that didn't have to do with transistors. The experience of a transistor was what he was trying to isolate or rather, the experience of holding the mana steady and in the shape of a transistor.

Holding a transistor still wasn't a significant experience but it was there because he had willed it to be there, and it was all this anima really knew. He suspected there was something else at play, something about his soul but he had no idea how to figure out what so he set it aside for later experimentation.

Once he had the concentrated essence of the experience in his hand, he took the rest of the anima and combined them, this time using his will to impose the experience on the blank anima.

This test was much more fruitful and he saw multiple transistors form in the anima but they weren't connected to each-other, they were simply free floating. He had somehow lost the sense of structure from the original.

He extracted more anima from the computer he had grown the previous night, now just half of its size from the night before, and sifted through it until he found the experience of its structure. He isolated that experience then imposed it on the rest of the anima causing all the transistors it had formed to snap together in a very satisfying way.

Felix reconnected the two computers, saving some of the anima to keep going then compressed more anima and imposed the experiences onto it. He fed it some mana and connected it to the existing computer then repeated that process.

Now, instead of attaching single transistors one at a time, he was attaching thousands of them at once. He continued to do so until the veil of night was pierced by the morning light.

In that one night, his mana computer had grown by almost 500 times in size and he was very happy with the progress.

Heading out for the day, Felix's only goal was to try and find the location he had seen from the circlet's soul. He had initially thought of the outpost but the stone walls were different colors and the landscape around it didn't match what he had seen through the windows.

The mountain in the background wasn't necessarily distinct, it wouldn't stand out on its own but it was capped in snow, which was somewhat rare. He also remembered seeing small specs of color in the canopy of the jungle, flowers or moss or something that had somehow grown through. Lastly, there was a small creek right on the far right edge of the image that flowed down from a nearby mountain.

None of it was much to go on but it was more direction than he had had the day before. He had also come out here specifically for levels anyway so he didn't mind having to search a little to find it. On the way, he would wipe out all the camps he came across which were actually worth a lot more levels than he had expected and when he harvested them, a lot more raw stats as well.

He was also getting closer to the custom class' stats per level. Considering how his leveling was slowing down dramatically, he suspected he would quickly surpass it if he just kept killing huge swathes of creatures. It also seemed like his harvesting efficiency had gone up and by his estimates, he was now around 25% efficient as a product of suffusing his body with a layer of his soul. Or possibly, just having another layer on his soul.

Felix spent the entire day hunting down anything he saw and managed to clear out almost 25 camps by the time he finally spotted something. As he flew around, he had been checking out every mountain capped with snow by flying up to the top and looking around for streams or color in the jungle canopy.

Finally, he spotted both off in the distance, far north-east of the outpost. Right in between the two landmarks was a cylindrical stone structure with a shingled roof rising just a few dozen meters through the tree canopy below. He immediately flew towards it but stopped himself short when he realized how dark it was. He chose a spot just a short flight away to wait out the darkness of the night and pulled back out his mana computer prototype.

He didn't want to risk having to fight anything in the dark. He knew there was at least one window in the room but he didn't know if the floating hands could see using something other than light. If so, there might not be any artificial light in the building at all so he wasn't willing to risk it.

Looking down at the mana computer, while he was happy with his progress the past day, he wasn't moving fast enough. His goal was to hit a transistor count in the billions and have the entire computer be much bigger. As of now, he had only just surpassed a million transistors and he really didn't want to spend another thousand nights working on it just to hit a billion.

Before doing anything, Felix tested the computer as thoroughly as he could over the course of an hour and ended up having to replace almost a hundred transistors. It wasn't a bad error rate by any means and it meant he was comfortable accelerating the growth further.

Instead of just fusing small pieces of anima to the computer piece by piece expanding it, he compressed enough anima to double it's size then carefully fused that all around the computer. He wanted it to grow in every direction simultaneously so that he maximized the surface area of the new part, the part that had to be grown from scratch. Giving it a template to grow from would hopefully mean less errors.

He repeated this process, each repetition taking progressively longer than the last. He managed to get all the way to 8 million but didn't manage to test it at all before the sky brightened and he saw the tower off in the distance once again.

Without wasting any more time, Felix dumped all his extra points into Intelligence, having more then enough room between his highest and lowest stats.