HLnovel Chapter 206 - Book 8
Chapter 206 - Book 8
Now that Felix was the head of A-SAM, he was able to see the list of members and whether or not anyone was occupying the headquarters at the moment. For a short while after the duel, there were a number of members inside, likely waiting to speak with him.
He didn't go anywhere near the building though and so, over the next few hours those people slowly trickled out, returning it to its standard state of being completely empty.
The first time Felix had visited the building he had had the foresight to memorize the portal coordinates of the A-SAM headquarters. That meant he could now minimize his face time with anyone else.
Felix knew there was a chance someone was waiting outside the building but luckily, found that not to be the case. Heading inside, he immediately veered right, into the show room. Ayred had already mentioned that many of the books inside were trapped, encrypted or in some kind of unknown code. He wasn't expecting to be able to read all of them, he wasn't even prepared to touch any of them, yet.
He was however, willing and now capable of opening the display cases. Walking around the room stopping at each display one by one, Felix opened the display case, scanned what he could, then closed it back up.
It actually took him a couple hours to scan everything, not that he got much from them. None of them were completely readable, some had forwards that weren't in code usually containing a warning. Others were written with creeping ink or had their own soul. None of them seemed to be sentient though.
Grim was pretty confident he could decipher most, if not all, of the books were he allowed to consume them as that was what he was designed to do. Felix just wasn't comfortable with that though, not unless it was a guarantee. He also didn't actually own the books and he wasn't sure who would come after him if he stole and destroyed them.
In the future, if they managed to decipher one or two of them and found them to be particularly unique and useful, Felix thought he might reconsider.
With that done, Felix opened a portal right back into his dorm room-to avoid everyone-where he spent the rest of the day in his Soul Garden trying to decipher the code in one of the books. It was written such that the entire book appeared to be a complete novel. Felix could read it, as could Grim, and they both concurred it was a decent story.
Their collective worry though, was that the code would be indecipherable unless they turned off The System's translations. If that were the case, they might have a lot of languages to learn first, a worry that multiplied with the number of books in the display room.
Learning a language wasn't difficult, Grim could do it trivially and he was confident he could somehow teach Felix a language through some soul and library fuckery. The issue, was that a lot of these languages seemed to be dead languages, secret languages, made up languages or something just as difficult to find references to.
Mana Structures wasn't a class Felix had to attend as he was provided memory crystals. He was missing out on around half of the class-as he was in all of his classes-as they often had demonstrations or simple projects like Ked had had in his first class. Otherwise everyone would have just been allowed to use memory crystals.
He was more than happy to have some time though where most people were in a class. It meant he was far less likely to be approached by other students looking to make friends, or get something out of the guy that defeated Tanryel.
His plan with his free time was to head to the library where he was hoping to scan some books on various codes and previous attempts at decoding the books in the A-SAM building. He also had a much better idea of what books and knowledge he was looking for in terms of mana, enchantments, rituals, spell forms and more now that he had baseline knowledge from class and other books.
Flying out of the dorm and across campus, Felix was happy to see just a handful of students and Adepts wandering around instead of the usual crowds he had been trying to avoid. By flying fairly high up he was able to avoid interacting with anyone all the way to the library where there was one other individual on their way out who didn't seem interested in him in the slightest.
Felix sighed in relief as he walked over to one of shelves and began speaking to the library itself. He started with past attempts and re
Making himself busy for the rest of the day until Peace and Melody had to leave, Felix mostly read and experimented with various spell forms in the hopes that he would soon be able to use them.
Walking into Professor Fin's office, which was actually the room attached to his classroom where Felix had first revealed his abilities, Felix found Fin practicing his mana control on the board.
"Ah, the impossible prodigy. What can I do for you?"
"I'm trying to increase my… well I've been calling it a focus limit but basically the number and complexity of the spells I can cast simultaneously."
Fin chuckled a little, "No one else would ever bother raw casting multiple spells at once. Here you are hoping you can cast more than 30."
Felix shrugged lightly, "Well, I can only cast 30 at once if they're identical and as simple as possible."
"Right, of course. From my experience-which may or may not be applicable to you at all-increasing the maximum complexity of my raw casts usually involves a lot of practice. I take it that's not the answer you were hoping for though?"
Felix shook his head, "I've gotten large increases before. I… attached a mana computer to my brain, that resulted in a decent jump. I also encountered some… challenging situations where controlling mana felt impossible. Training there resulted in another jump."
Fin frowned, "I'm going to ignore the computer thing for the moment. What if we just simulate that challenging place?"
"I've been doing that as much as I can, unfortunately it hasn't been as effective recently."
"I see. Well, let's see if we can't figure out where the actual limit is."
Felix nodded and walked over to the board, already having tried this himself. He immediately drew out and held the most complicated spell form image he could within the board, the portal spell form.
On Fin's signal, he then tried to draw out another spell form. Looking back at the portal spell form, the intricate details had grown fuzzy and unclear. The ring around the outside and the larger lines though, remained solid.
Felix turned his head towards Fin, "Any ideas?"
Fin smirked, "You're a smart kid. Look at the portal spell form."
Felix looked at it.
Fin's voice carried his building enthusiasm, "It didn't just… fall apart entirely."
"No, it just became unusable."
Fin, with even more enthusiasm, "Right but, how? How specifically did it fail?"
"The details… got fuzzy?"
"Right. Why those intricate details though? The first part you drew was the outer ring. Why didn't it fall apart first? The nodes are the most intricate, why are some of those still solid?"
Felix frowned as he examined the spell form, hearing what Fin was saying and isolating the individual components that were failing.
Felix gasped, "It's my brain…"
Fin chuckled, "I find it ironic, given your Mana Visualization Skill."
Felix nodded understanding. The irony was that his problem was visualization and Fin had invented the skill name visualization, "I was wrong then. It has nothing to do with the connection between my brain and soul."
Fin shrugged, "Could be a factor too but if that were the case, it shouldn't be hard to figure out."
Felix nodded, "Thanks."
"Before you go… you mentioned you 'attached a mana computer to your brain?' How exactly does that work?"
"Long story but my mana control lets me… make more intricate mana computers. I made one then carefully connected it directly to my neurons. It hasn't been as useful as I had hoped but… I'm hoping to fix that in the future."
Fin nodded slowly, "I see. Well, if you need help in the future, don't… hesitate to ask."
Felix nodded, "Thanks."
Okay so… I assumed I could actively hold the mental image for almost infinite spell forms but… I'm starting to doubt that now.
Back in his dorm, Felix began imagining spell forms surrounding him without actually creating them out of mana. He found his limit, was exactly the same as his actual focus limit.
My long term memory is effectively infinite, for my purposes at the moment, but my… active memory? seems to be holding me back. Unfortunately… how the fuck do I improve that?
You've already got a computer attached to your brain.
Felix scoffed, Yeah not looking to add another.
No but, maybe you can repurpose some of it.
Oh… that's an interesting thought.
At first, Felix thought about rewiring one of the servers in the server room building within his mind but then changed his mind. Instead, he walked out into the city and created a new building, this one a dome made of small triangles.
Walking inside, he imagined the inside of the dome being a mesh of screens with projectors at the points. Within the chamber itself, the projectors would then work together to form holograms. They didn't display anything at the moment though because he had purposefully left everything disconnected and he wasn't currently picturing anything.
Once it was complete, he ran cables to connect the new building to the server room.
From there, Felix created a construct to manage the server room where he rewired and changed some things so that they were all connected to a central terminal. From there, the new construct, dubbed Ned, would control which servers were allocated to which portion of his brain.
Instead of rewiring servers directly to buildings, this had the advantage of being dynamic. He could change the allocation on the fly, in theory.
With all of his preparations complete, Felix returned to his body and had Ned allocate 50% of the computers to his focus.
Immediately, Felix noticed the difference. His perception suffered and his brain felt slower but, every spell form he imagined felt incredibly clear. The visualizations themselves more solid than he had ever experienced. Almost like they were actually inscribed into his mind.
Testing with as many spells as he could come up with, Felix couldn't help but laugh out loud as he surpassed 40 spell levels worth of focus. He ended up finding his limit just over 50, which was more than double his previous amount.
Well… that was… awesome.
Yeah small problem though… some of your library was… lost.
Felix coughed as he choked on his own spit, Wait… What?
Nothing important. We structured it so you lost only filler information and nothing you couldn't get back but… you're going to need to head to the library again to rescan some of those books.
Shit. Okay, that's a problem. I can't go losing half my memories every time I need to cast a complex spell.
Right. Now that you have Mark though…
He's not big enough to hold all my memories though.
No, but he could be.
Felix sighed, Alright. Adding it to the todo list, highest priority, memory backups. Once I figure that out, we can designate different modes. Everything dedicated to speed, perception and focus can be battle mode. Wait, I won't have problems with having my memories outside of my head right? Like falling into the same trap twice?
I don't think so… most of that should be experience that falls into your soul's domain but… let's make a new building for that stuff anyways then just move the library to Mark. Just in case. Also, maybe make number two increasing your brain's capacity.
Felix immediately harvested everything he could from the computer growth farms he had created and began expanding them as the cells regrew. If he was going to have Mark hold a backup of his entire mind, Mark was going to have to be a lot bigger.
Luckily, even though he had restricted Mark's size by fitting him into a shell, there were more than 3 spatial dimensions Felix had access to. Making Mark incredibly long in the 4th spatial dimension wasn't a good idea because it would be like making a really tall and skinny tower, it wouldn't be stable.
Once he got to that point though, Felix would either make a second Mark and connect them in a network or compress his transistors to be even smaller. That wasn't a problem for any time in the near future though so, Felix didn't bother trying to solve it.
He still didn't have enough for Mark to exceed the size of his own brain in terms of physical size or storage size but he used what he could so Grim could start backing up the most important memories. As his mana computer growing green-house produced more computer, he would harvest and within about a dozen dekads, he estimated Mark would be big enough.
That accounted both for maintaining its current function of offloading processing from constructs and backing up all his current memories. He wouldn't stop there but that was his current goal for the time being.
He also wanted to increase the size of the computer connected to his brain but that was problematic. Briefly, he experimented with changing things but stopped before changing anything permanently because the computer itself had changed and adapted. It wasn't as simple as increasing its size anymore.
Once he was done with that, it was time for his first training session with Peace so Felix flew out to the open field they had chosen.
The field was similar to the one they had used for Group Combat a few dekads back, large, flat, open and grassy. They wanted to be far enough away that they weren't interrupted but what they were doing wasn't a secret so they didn't portal to another planet or anything.
Surprising Felix though, as he landed in the field, he saw Peace and Melody waiting for him.
Melody waved and smiled her with her usual gleeful demeanor as he approached, "Hey Felix!"
Felix nodded in acknowledgement.
Peace answered the unasked question, "She asked if I could teach her too. I told her it would take hundreds of epochs to build the soul strength, awareness and control but she insisted."
Felix shrugged, "She seems fairly talented with soul shit, maybe it doesn't take her that long."
Melody smiled wildly at Felix.
"Maybe. We'll see-" Peace turned to Melody, "-as we already discussed, your first task is to be able to morph and shape your soul within your body."
Melody nodded then skipped over to the edge of the field and fell into a meditation.
Peace turned to Felix and nodded, "Okay. I'll be honest, I don't know that much about you. Can you share with me the skills you're using and the class?"
Felix suddenly grew incredibly wary about trusting Peace.
Peace closed his eyes and released a long drawn out sigh as he shook his head, "I don't actually have a class or anything. I'm not a leveler technically. You may have noticed my level change randomly? The System is guessing as to my strength. Due to… other abilities I have, it's difficult to estimate. I know you have a Legendary class called Reaper. I also know you have a movement skill and a Perception skill. I just need to know the specifics so I can figure out how to teach you."
His worries abated, Felix shared the descriptions of his class and all his class skills with Peace who quickly read them through.
Peace nodded, "Okay, first things first. You probably want to drop Dragon's Dance unless you want to become a martial artist. Even if you do though, I can teach you an equivalent Mythical skill to replace it fairly quickly."
Felix shook his head, "Wait… Yes?"
Peace cocked his head in confusion, "You want to become a martial artist?"
Felix scoffed, "No. I want a Mythical skill."
Peace shook his head, "Not worth it for you. Drop that skill and I'll teach you something more fitting right now."
Felix nodded and dropped the skill, mostly because he had already been planning on dropping it anyways. It wasn't doing much for him and he lost very little from dropping it.
Peace nodded, "Alright first things first, what do you know about the Reaper skills? The class? What have you figured out so far?"
Felix shrugged, "Not much. I'm pretty sure the skills all have to do with my soul…"
"Yes, sort of. I told you I don't level. Long ago there was time when The System didn't exist. During this time, people trained to grow stronger and did amazing things through the use of mana, enchantments and their souls. This is how all of my abilities work."
"So the class avoids The System?"
"No. It wasn't designed to avoid The System at all. It was designed to house a number of skills that were deemed… useful. Those skills also happen to be skills that are nearly impossible for The System to replicate, at least in the same way. It could just move you faster but it cannot do it the same way we are. This is just because the most powerful skills are the most useful and the hardest to use. Instead, it guides your own capabilities… sort of, it's complicated."
"Okay, so it's not intentional. Why are they skills at all? Why should I keep them on my status sheet?"
"Because having The System automate things for us is incredibly valuable. You can totally drop all the skills though and just do them yourself. Just make sure you don't get distracted."
Felix sighed in understanding, "Or fall unconscious or into an illusion or get soul manipulated into dropping them."
"Yeah, basically."
Felix nodded, "Alright. Maybe one day. For now, how do I use them properly?"
"First things first, Movement is the most visible and easiest for me to show you so, watch carefully."
Felix nodded to Peace, indicating he was watching then Peace performed a series of martial arts steps in slow motion, just as he had in Felix's Soul Garden. This time though, every movement, even though they were slow, was trailed by a long trail of black.
With Peace moving in slow motion and Felix specifically looking for it, Felix realized the trails weren't just trails of empty blackness. Trailing behind Peace's body as he moved was a twisting cloud of shadow outlined with hints of color on the edges. The colors were muted and close to black so Felix only really noticed them because he was paying close attention but he was certain they were there.
Felix frowned, "How are you doing that while moving slowly?"
Peace stopped and nodded to Felix, "Good question. You have Reaper's Movement which affects mostly your Agility and Dexterity. My stats are estimated-again, not really part of The System-but that's what my similar skill affects. The premise though, carries over into Reaper's Sense, and Reaper's Body."
The pieces started to come together in Felix's mind, "I first activated the skill when I actively willed my arm to move. Are you saying it's about willful actions? Does Body apply to Strength, Vitality and Endurance? Is there one for Intelligence?"
"Yes. Yes, and Yes."
"Wait… that's it? It's that easy?"
Peace chuckled, "It's that simple, easy it is not."
Felix looked down at his arm then, using all of the intent he could muster, moved it across his body with as much power and strength as he could muster. He kept the movement slow though.
It took him a few swipes to finally get it and once he did, the movement only created a small, barely visible and sputtering trail instead of a large wake like Peace's movements. Now that he was looking though, the trail he created visually matched Peace's, just on a smaller scale. The whole thing was much harder than he remembered though so, Felix tried to move quickly as he had during his duel with Tanryel, just to confirm that was the same.
As he had realized in Group Combat, he found that activating Reaper's Movement was just as hard as moving his arm slowly with power. Significantly more difficult than it had been during the duel.
"Why is it so… hard… now?"
"During the duel, you were pushed to the edge and likely invoked your conviction, right?"
Felix nodded in confirmation.
"Adrenaline, a similar effect your soul can undergo and many other things compound to bring you into a state where it's easier. It won't always be like that in combat though."
"I see. To do it outside of combat, I need to practice then."
Peace nodded, "To make it consistent even in combat."
Felix nodded, "Okay, is there a better way to go about this other than just… moving?"
Peace smiled, "There's the right question. Yes. The problem is that willfully moving or doing anything with intent requires focus."
Felix cut in as he understood, "So either I make it instinctual or I'll accidentally get distracted and trip."
"Exactly."
Peace taught Felix a new set of steps just so he had something to distract him while he tried to use his intent to move his body. Ironically, Peace had planned everything ahead of time and Felix didn't have trouble remembering the steps because he already had memories of Peace performing them in his Soul Garden.
Actually performing them was another story and thoroughly distracting. Felix was never going to be a martial arts grandmaster or even be competitive for his age but it was effective and Felix found it fun.
Felix spent the rest of the day, with Peace's guidance, practicing the use of his Reaper's skills. Peace was obviously new at instructing anyone but he was also very knowledgeable about the skills themselves. Felix got the sense he was either very talented or had been working on them his entire life, possibly both.
Though he didn't increase any of his skill proficiencies, he did acquire a new skill, as Peace had promised.
Ding You have demonstrated sufficient proficiency to unlock the Class Skill: [Reaper's Body (Legendary - Novice I) This skill amplifies the user's body in every way. It does not directly affect the body but amplifies its core functions. If the user is injured they will heal faster and with more direction. It will increase the body's resiliency and assist the user's muscles when strained. This skill is heavily dependent on and scales with your Strength, Vitality and Endurance.]
Unfortunately, the Reaper's skill that increased his Intelligence was an evolution of Reaper's Sense so he was going to have to increase its proficiency until he could evolve it.
Melody didn't seem to get anywhere with one session, despite her best efforts to move around and create trails like they were. She didn't overly need the instruction though as all she needed was to dedicate time but still, she promised to attend whenever she could.
They decided on the same meeting day for the next dekad, though Felix would practice more often than that, because he didn't need instruction more often. He occasionally had questions but they weren't pressing.
Instead of working on spells at night like he had expected, Felix was excited to start his own project on the 8th and he had already been told Solo Combat the next day was another lecture so, he headed to the lab.
Inside, despite the late hour, Felix found Ked tinkering with an enchantment on a humanoid construct.
Noticing him enter, Ked spoke at a normal volume knowing Felix could hear him from across the lab, "Have you figured out what project you're going to work on this epoch?"
"I think so. I want to make eyes."
Ked stopped what he was doing and looked over from across the lab, "Eyes? Like the ones in our heads?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"I take it they're more complicated than just that. I also take it you have some sort of plan?"
Felix nodded.
"Well, let me know if you need any help or a design review."
"I will definitely be taking you up on that."
Felix only had the barest of outlines for what he wanted to attempt in his mind. What he didn't have, was enough experience to know what he was looking for. Luckily, the lab was filled with half finished constructs and designs scattered about that he could pull from.
For the most complex part, Felix's inclination was to use an actual biological eyeball that he could create himself using the Blood Ring or his own body. The issue with that was that he definitely wanted the body to be mechanical and trying to fit together just enough biological components to support the eye would likely be a waste of space.
The only constructs that combined the two though were much larger and were creatures.
Photosensitive mechanical cells though, were incredibly complex to make and couldn't grow or evolve easily. He would likely have to recreate his constructs from scratch instead of simply swapping in a new eye. They were also prohibitively large, much larger than he was aiming for with these constructs.
On earth, the sensor in a camera would work perfectly. In the multiverse though, mana made electrical components unstable and precision on a scale that small was difficult.
An earth human's eye was less powerful than a camera but here, based on his stats alone, Felix's eyes were thousands of times better than a standard human's. He didn't have the time to iterate and improve upon camera sensors and there was very little work others had done on the subject at all.
There were enchantments and spells but they were almost always inferior to an eye so long as there was a sufficient brain to support the eye. Felix would easily be able to create a sufficient brain and he was too stubborn to use an enchantment when the eye was better so he was left with trying to create the smallest possible heart he could.
Alternatively, he had to find a creature that didn't use blood or oxygen for their cells. If he could solve that problem, everything else was treaded ground and all he had to do was adapt existing knowledge.
He didn't go to Ked for a solution yet though and instead, he spent his time perusing the various designs in the workshop, memorizing and dissecting them for anything useful.
Walking into the Mana Control class room for the Adept class, Felix was approached by Fin, "I take it you found a solution to your problem?"
"Yes. Sort of. I can't… use it now without problems but I'm working on it. I managed to hit 51 spell levels."
Fin looked at him with confusion so Felix quickly converted to a rough estimate in their more accurate measuring system.
Fin's eyes grew wide, "That's a massive improvement."
Felix shrugged, "It's much less restrictive."
"It's still not… ideal. Withrel has created spells hundreds of times your new limit."
Felix sighed, "Yeah. At least now I've got a clear path to improve it in the future. Other than hard work and practice of course."
Fin chuckled, "If you can keep increasing without practice, by all means. Some things you just need to put in the work for. Some things though, there are better ways."
The class as a whole continued to find ways to stress everyone at once, most often against Felix, for the rest of their time slot.
The next dekad was interesting in the sense that the vibe was obviously different, people were tense awaiting the next dekad's preliminary evaluations. Some of the students were even more annoying about getting Felix to duel them and some gave up on asking him completely.
Other than the vibe of the students though, the classes themselves were boring. He and Peace dominated their group combat class once again despite Reaper's Movement failing him as soon as he saw an interesting spell form.
Otherwise, Felix spent his time designing enchantments for his construct, researching methods of having constructs see and creating more complex spell forms. He made sure though, as he had been for a while now, to keep the actual work contained in his Soul Garden so he didn't gain any levels.
So long as he remained below the threshold, he could hold off on his evolution until he was certain he would be offered Soulbinder. Having done some research, despite everything having said it was possible but only barely, he was pretty sure it wouldn't be too difficult for him.
His uniqueness made the hardest part, being proficient with binding souls to constructs, fairly easy. He wanted to build up some experience and accomplish some feats related to the profession just to be certain it was offered.
There was always the chance he was offered something better but he was targeting Soulbinder as his default.
His training with Peace was largely uneventful and rather calm considering Melody was too busy to show up.
Solo Combat was back to a lecture but, they were promised the course would completely shift over to sparring after the evaluation the next dekad. Felix was looking forward to that though he still had a lot of work until he was at the point where he wanted to be training himself in duels.
He was still at least 8 dekads from having Mark be large enough to back up his memories and so he was still wary about dedicating some of the computer to his active memory.
Seeing how far out that still was, Felix dedicated just over a day to increasing the size of his computer growing cells. They were quickly reaching the point where it was pushing against the edges of their Soul Space though so he would have to relocate it soon.
He also spent some time trying to find a way to have his mental constructs self replicate but he wasn't comfortable with any of what they came up with. All of them involved him giving them access to his soul even just to bind the constructs to their brains.
Maybe one day he would allow them but for now, he trusted no one. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .