Chronicles of the True Wizard

Once Felix had evenly spread just a trickle of mana through the entire side, causing it to glow, another side started glowing with a circle in the middle. This time, the circle in the center of the side had a small hole in it. This side also had a small point glowing on it completely separated from the circle in the middle. Felix figured he had to complete the circle with the tiny point so he started moving it around. There was only one way for it to go so he moved it in that direction. As soon as he did, the glowing point disappeared from sight. He could still feel it, it was still there, it just wasn't visually represented anymore.

Felix continued to move the tiny point of mana wherever he could but very quickly it fell into a small hole he couldn't move it out of. The original point reappeared visually, and he restarted the side. Felix quickly realized there were small traps throughout the pathways where the point of mana he was controlling would get stuck. With no way to see the traps he simply started to memorize them as he went and avoided them in future. That turned out to be a futile notion, as the traps and pathways changed every time.

His only tool was the unit of mana which was smaller than the smallest unit he had individually controlled on the last side. Without any better options, he started spreading out his trickle of mana as much as he could, which was not much, so he could map and test the paths as he went. Slowly, as he progressed further, he had to spread it out further and further. The traps were essentially just dead ends that cut themselves off, if the mana was blocking the trap door though, it couldn't close. Felix had to spread the mana so it could reach all the way down to the end of the path without getting it trapped. Eventually he kept spreading it until he could map multiple paths at once and it became much easier. He could get about three quarters of the way through very quickly without issue.

Once that side was complete, another side opened itself up. There was only a single point and nothing glowed but, at this point, Felix's senses were so tuned to minute amounts of mana, that he sensed it appear instantly. He moved it around and found multiple pathways. He was worried about more traps but didn't find any. It was a simple maze. He shot the mana around as quickly as he could and used his memory palace to map the labyrinth. It was massive, as the channels and unit of mana were minuscule, but he finished it fairly quickly.

The next side had many tiny points of mana spread throughout it. Felix moved them at random and quickly found that some of them were completely trapped. As he moved the ones that weren't trapped, others freed themselves. It was like a co-op video game, press a button with one character and open a door for another. Except the characters were mana, everything was hidden visually, and there were a lot of characters. Felix mentally mapped the opening and closing of paths with the mana carefully. Once he had everything he could mapped, he entered his mind palace, solved the stage step by step on paper in reverse, then repeated his mapping and solving all the following stages.

The final side lit up with a circle of mana. Felix tried moving it before remembering how the first two sides started. He pushed mana into the circle and it spread out at random through the side of the cube. Once it was filled the side stopped accepting mana. Felix waited for something to happen but nothing did. He moved the mana around randomly but nothing happened. Thinking back to the first two stages he figured he would just manipulate it until it was evenly spread out.

It was difficult because some areas were thinner than others, meaning the mana had to be compressed so that the amount of mana was consistent across the entire side of the cube.

Felix sat cross legged with the cube in front of him. He looked around for the first time in a long time and saw nothing. He sat alone, with the cube, in an empty abyss. At first he thought it was just night time with no lights but he realized, looking down, he could see himself and the cube perfectly without any light. Felix cast a simple Light spell and immediately noticed, something was wrong.

The small ball of light appeared where he cast it, but he could see the mana flowing out of his body, forming the spell and casting. He could see the mana being expended to create light. The light also didn't reveal anything. He, his clothes and the cube looked brighter in the light but there was no floor revealed beneath him. On the other hand, the cube glowed, on all sides. Felix knew the mana should have been hidden on a few sides, but it wasn't, he could see it all.

It was at this point that Felix also realized, the cube was floating in the air. Felix carefully tried to stand and was surprised to find something below him. He was half expecting to find himself floating even though he could feel the floor beneath him. Felix took a few steps and found nothing change whatsoever.

What the hell is happening?

Felix reached out to touch the cube and it shot into his hand immediately.

That's new.

Felix focused on his senses. He could feel the cube in his hands, that made sense, he could feel his eye lids touching each other, except his eyes weren't closed at all. He could feel the floor beneath him, but he felt himself sitting on it, not standing at all.

Ah, I'm still meditating.

Felix opened his physical eyes and felt his mind rushing back into his body. He looked around the bed room and found everything to be as he expected. The sun shown brightly through the windows lighting up the room. Felix struggled to stand up as his legs were slightly numb.

Ding You have successfully upgraded the General Skill: [Soul Space Meditation (Rare) You began your journey on the path of meditation by focusing your mind. You have stretched the idea of focus close to it's limit. You completely eliminate stray thoughts to focus on a particular task, removing all distractions. When you meditate, you enter a metaphysical space within your own soul. This place does not exist. Anything that is relevant to the task at hand can be represented in your soul space, based entirely on your senses and how you see the object. This skill can be upgraded. Your Mana, Energy and Health restore themselves at an increased rate while meditating (x5). The passage of time while within your soul space is altered based on your Intelligence. (Current dilation: 77.34% normal time)]

Woah that meditation upgrade is huge and I think I know how to upgrade it to the next stage as well. At least, I know how I want to try upgrading it next. It's nice having some direction.

[E - Arcane] Skill Test Cube: Mana Control

Congratulations!

You have completed a Skill Test Cube: Mana Control

Would you like to collect your rewards?

Yes.

No.

Felix looked down at the cube in his hand. He had completed all sides of the cube. He turned it over in his hand and inspected the sides of the cube. From every visual indication, the cube was complete. From Felix's mana senses, something felt wrong, like it was still incomplete. All of his solutions to the six different faces of the cube felt crude whereas the cube itself was a sleek masterpiece in every way. Something was wrong.

No.

Maybe Felix was wrong, and in the future he would just claim it, but for now he would leave it as is. He did really want an Arcane rarity reward, but he wanted to complete the cube and complete it right, even more. Felix pulled up the tutorial screen in complete shock

Tutorial Status

There are 87,970/100,000 people.

There are 93 days, 20 hours, 2 minutes remaining.

You have completed 2 dungeons.

You have helped kill 0 world bosses.

You have captured 1 fort.

I was working on that cube, for nine days. Actually maybe even longer depending on when Meditation upgraded. I do feel hungry, thirsty and a little tired, but not nearly as much as I would have expected. Probably the minor evolution and the fact that I was meditating the whole time. Still, it sounds insane.

Felix pulled out two canteens and a Goblin Ration. He expected to eat more, but either his body was much more efficient, or meditating consumed a minimal amount of energy, likely both. Felix used the first set effect from his shirt, pants and boots for the first time. He pushed mana into them and they cleaned themselves off. He was mostly doing it for the smell because they still looked fine otherwise.

That will have to do, I don't have any way of cleaning myself off really. Wait a minute…

Felix removed the shirt he had equipped, wet it with a canteen then used the make shift wash cloth to scrub himself down. Once he was done, he put it on and pushed mana into it. The water and all the accumulated grime slowly disappeared.

That's probably the best I can do for now. We don't exactly have running water.

As fresh and clean as he could manage, Felix left his room. He walked through the interior of the castle, which was entirely empty. It didn't strike him as odd at first until he remembered all the people that were staying here before. He walked downstairs, outside and through the castle grounds without seeing anyone else. As he approached the gate to leave the castle grounds, he began hearing people and construction sounds.

He exited the gate and walked towards where he knew the warehouse was and found it had been completed with a roof and everything. Felix saw a massive wooden door on the wall facing him wide enough to fit at least two carts. Following the loudest sounds, he walked by the warehouse and towards the residential district. Walking through the industrial district, there were some buildings that were complete, but not many. There was what appeared to be a forge, judging from the smoke billowing out of the chimney, and a few other unidentifiable completed buildings.

As he got closer, the noises from construction grew louder. Walking into the residential district, Felix was astonished at both how many people and how many usable houses he passed by. Once he passed into the residential district, he didn't see a single house in ruins. Most of them were ruins that were patched up to be functional, but some were complete houses where the only indication that it was ever in ruins was the slight discoloration differentiating new vs old stone bricks.

There were people passing by on every street making it felt like a real city. He walked through most of the district and saw that some of the houses further in were still in ruins. A lot of the plots of land were completely empty as well. Looking at his map, Felix noticed something he definitely was not expecting. Some of the empty plots of land and ruined buildings, were up for sale by auction.

As he continued walking, the plots of land for sale got bigger and more expensive the closer to the outer edge of the fort they got. It started to feel a little like a gated community to Felix. Not all of the really expensive ones were for sale, some were owned by different residents. As the leader of the fort, Felix could see the names of the people who owned the plots, but he didn't recognize any of them. Felix looped around and walked towards the commercial district of town.

There was some construction happening in the residential district, but there weren't nearly enough people to have built as many homes as Felix had seen in such a short time, even with levels and stats. He walked into the commercial district and walked by even more people than he had in the residential district. The streets were effectively packed and most of the buildings were either still in ruin or had been patched to be useable. Even the ones in complete ruin though, appeared to be in use. About half of the buildings were a work in progress and were not trying to sell anything, the other half were trying to sell everything. There were people trying to sell all kinds of weird things they had picked up along the way.

Felix walked around for a while admiring the useless goods on sale. He walked by a grass store, a rock store, bark store and many more useless goods that apparently nobody wanted. He did walk by some people trying to sell food, but none of it was very appetizing.

Eventually Felix gave up and decided to just ask someone where Noah or Amelia were. On a whim, he opened his map to see if maybe he could find them somehow. The first thing he noticed, was that his map in his current general area was almost entirely filled. All the way to the west coast, the south coast and far into the forest were completely revealed. The second was that, he saw a marker for a bunch of things on his map. There were markers for lumber camps, mines and farms all around the outside of the fort and in the forest.

There was also a marker for Noah just a few blocks away, so he headed over there. He turned the corner and Noah immediately spotted him and came running. Felix slowed down so he wouldn't accidentally run into Noah. He was already walking very slow to minimize the chances of hitting anyone as he wasn't precise enough with his new set's movement speed to dodge the random movements of people in a busy street.

Noah addressed Felix as soon as he was close enough to hear him, "Oh, finally you are back. Quick, follow me."

Felix walked along side Noah as he led him down a few blocks. Noah led them to the front of one of the few finished buildings in the entire commercial district. It was also the biggest building, other than the warehouse, he had seen that was clearly built from scratch. It was a massive white building made of what appeared to be marble with decorative pillars around the front.

"This is the marketplace and auction house, or it will be. We need you to buy nodes for each and place them in here. Only you have permission to do that right now." Noah gestured to the building.

Felix walked in alongside Noah.

"This side will be a marketplace, The System prices the goods and even supplies some of them." Noah explained, "This side is the auction house, where you set a price for a good and people can bid on it. The System and the town take a tax, but it's tutorial wide, so other markets and auction houses in the tutorial can buy and sell with each other."

"Oh sweet, I gotta run back to the throne then I guess. Be right back." Felix turned around before Noah stopped him.

"WAIT! You can buy buildings and nodes from anywhere in the city, I can pull up and see the screen, but I don't have permission."

"Oh shit, sweet. One second."

Buy Buildings?

A screen appeared in front of Felix with a bunch of options for buildings. Simple things like wooden shacks and shops appeared. A small notice appeared that the wooden buildings were upgradeable but their upgrades would be locked until the town upgraded.

I didn't even know the town/fort could upgrade. Wild.

Felix scrolled to the Auction and Marketplace nodes, each of them cost only 1000 Tutorial Credits. He bought enough to fill the empty booths on all of the walls of the building, then walked around and placed them. The nodes appeared to be simple discs that fastened themselves in some unknown fashion to the desk. To use them, all you had to do was touch the disc.

"That's awesome. Any other buildings we should be buying? Also how did I buy those, my credits didn't go down at all?" Felix asked.

"The fort's coffers. The fort makes money from taxes on all transactions happening in the town. That brings me to another thing I need you for, we have started selling buildings and plots of land at auction, then building houses and shops based on who paid the most. We are buying materials from miners and lumberjacks, but we don't have access to the town coffers, so we have just been giving them an ‘I owe you' and keeping a tally of how much we owe them. I need you to approve the purchases or give Amelia or I permissions."

"Oh shit, my bad. I guess I have to go to the throne for that one."

"I'll come with you, I want to talk with you about the next focus for the town." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .