Chronicles of the True Wizard

Chapter 226 - Book 28

The last recruitment he had scheduled was the one he was the most excited for, at least at the moment.

Earlier on, he was more excited for the others because those were the recruitments he was planning on making the most progress in. Now that he had done that, accomplished just about everything he had hoped to, his priorities had shifted. He still had some things to work out, but Rhonan's was where he would put all of his progress, to the test.

On the day of, Felix walked and flew towards the portal room and joined the single biggest collection of students from Eramith he had ever seen. Luckily, all of them were heading to the same place and the portal was just left open so they all simply walked through. He wasn't so excited that he needed to be right there when it opened, but rather he genuinely believed every minute counted.

Walking along at a steady pace, the line moved through the building until finally Felix caught sight of the room itself and a few people standing outside of it. One of which, was Melody.

She saw him about the same time he saw her and she smiled then skipped over to join him in the line. No one really minded her cutting in either because of who she was or because of how fast the line was moving.

"Hey. You changed your hair. I kind of liked the reddish orange mess."

Oh whoops. Forgot to regrow that.

"Changed my head actually. Just forgot, I'll regrow it."

She cocked her head and stared at him for a moment then snorted, "How have your recruitments been so far?"

"Great, actually. Better than I expected in many ways."

She nodded, "You look… or rather feel different."

Felix smirked, "Wait till you feel Peace."

She smirked but didn't ask, figuring she would find out eventually anyways, "Got any specific goals in mind for this one?"

"Yes and no. I have a couple things to finish up but, mostly just want to get used to everything that changed."

"Makes sense."

The line was moving quickly and their conversation was cut short as they walked through the portal themselves and into the biggest building Felix had ever seen, from inside or out.

Looking around him, the ground floor they arrived on was massive and stretched out in every direction, as if the tile floors were a natural phenomena that formed a vast field. Off to the sides, near the walls, there were multiple halls that stretched out, some of them with signs, others with no labels at all. These halls existed all around the building on every floor Felix could see.

Tilting his head back, Felix couldn't actually make out the ceiling, however far it was. All along the edge of the non-ground floors, as far as he could see, were railings and on the lower ones he could just make out even more openings. Likely each leading to their own winding hall with rooms contained along them.

His rough math put the number of floors, multiplied by the number of halls on each and finally rooms in each hall in building in the low billions but he was almost certain that couldn't be true so he waited to see if there was something he was missing.

The entire building looked oddly modern from the inside too with lots of natural light, open space and clean lines forming the architecture.

Once he was done examining his surroundings, Felix finally noticed Melody smirking at him but he just ignored her. Unlike her, he hadn't actually seen anything like this before. He was still relatively new to the multiverse after all.

She didn't get a chance to tease him directly though as they were approached by a humanoid female with long white hair and simple clothes. All in all, rather unassuming.

[A - Exotic] Sword Sage: Ameryl (Lvl 3892)

Sword Sage? Sword is a pretty general category. Not sure how she can be the Sage of Swords unless… is it just a title? Like Somatic Sage and Spirit Sage for Peace and I respectively?

Felix nudged Melody with his Matter Control which confused her greatly, "Is she actually a Sage or is that just a title?"

"It's a title and she's a Sage. Gods have claims over certain titles. Rhonan has most of the combat ones, Edras a bunch of the Academic and some Mage like ones, Radleus has all the merchant ones, Sha'alin has all the thief ones and so on."

"That makes sense. What's she the Sage of then?"

Melody smirked, "Sword Fighting."

"That's… super general also… this is something I've been wondering for a while now, wouldn't that be a pretty low rarity skill? Once you get to Sage tier in a skill, you're likely to also have a high level and you've probably upgraded and specialized your skill along the way, right?"

"It depends. Ameryl doesn't have Sword Fighting as a skill but her class is based entirely around Sword Fighting and she has enough derivative skills of Sword Fighting that are all at Sage proficiency, that they get grouped up. You also don't need to have a skill, to have all the knowledge and understanding of that skill."

"What about Mana Manipulation for example?"

"That's a good exception. There aren't really many derivatives or evolutions of that skill, at least there's only one that I know of. Instead, everyone has the skill but gets different benefits out of it. If you practice and hone your Mana Manipulation speed, the skill will decrease your Cast Time more than anything else. If you focus on Mana Manipulation quantity, power. Control, stability."

"So then to get to Sage in a skill like that…"

She nodded, "You'd have to re-generalize afterwards. Which is why it was so impressive that Khidell had reached Sage proficiency at all. That along with the skill being notoriously painful to train."

Felix nodded in acknowledgement, "So then…" He thumbed in Ameryl's direction, "She's like… super impressive then?"

Melody smirked, "Oh yeah. She's super famous. Ridiculously bonkers strong too. Like, definitely high Demi-God tier in terms of raw combat ability."

"Demi-God… Just to be sure…"

She nodded, "Just means S grade or above. At that point the whole level grade thing breaks down and kind of falls apart. You know how Peace is an exception to the level thing? At that point normal levels and grades are the exception and sentients like Peace are the norm."

"So then to become a god, you just need to be S grade and open an afterlife?"

"Yeah. Pretty much. It's a lot harder than it sounds but, in essence, yes."

As the last of their group filed in from the portal behind them, Felix looked back to see how many others there were and saw thousands of similar portals and groups behind him. Each of them had an elite of some kind to greet and guide them from A grades and Sages to Demi-Gods.

"Welcome to Osgard." Ameryl addressed the group, gathering their attention rather quickly.

"You're the group from Eramith and you all have Epic recruitments. What that means is, you'll have a little more time on everything, but not as much as you'd want. First things first, anywhere you can go, you're allowed to go. Yes, that includes getting into locked rooms without the key. I was told to warn you though, it probably isn't a good idea anyways. Some doors are locked for a reason."

"As for everything else, the only restrictions are on how much time you have on the Class and Profession leveling worlds." She sighed a little through her nose, "You'll all get 1 hour of access every day to a C grade Beast Breeding or Resource Collection world of your choice. You will have unlimited time however, with instructors for sparring, labs and workshops at all times. Use your time wisely."

Felix leaned over and whispered to Melody, "That doesn't seem like a lot."

"It's a lot. Finding C grade monsters to fight is pretty annoying as is. B and A grade are nearly impossible. So, Gods basically take planets in their domains and terraform them with added Mana so they can breed high grade creatures. Issue is, how long would it take you to clear a medium sized planet if it were covered in monsters?"

"What's medium sized?"

"Eramith sized."

"If it were actually covered and the Mana Density was high, 1,000 epochs?"

"Okay. Creatures that strong can't be packed in very tight so lets just say one per square kilometer."

"50 epochs or so."

"Okay. We need to keep at least half of them alive for them to repopulate the planet."

"So 25 epochs."

"And it would take about 25 epochs to repopulate that half of the planet."

Felix sighed, "So it would literally need to be an entire planet, with people feeding and breeding and managing the creatures to not kill each-other, just so I alone could kill things constantly."

Melody nodded, "Yup. So if you have…" She turned and looked around at all the people still streaming in from portals all over, "A few billion looking to farm levels…"

"You'd need a few billion planets, enough mana to cover them and keep them dense and enough people to manage and maintain the herds of creatures on each. Which means they need to be strong and skilled enough to trivially deal with the beasts themselves."

She shrugged, "Yeah so, not a trivial thing. 1 hour is pretty generous at least compared to other recruitments. Also that's only really possible for the C grade, don't even think about B or even A grade. That is when it becomes a real issue. The Tournament of the Abyss filled that hole for the lucky ones but… yeah, that's not a thing anymore."

Felix nodded in understanding then turned back to their guide and the crowd he had been mindlessly following while he and Melody spoke. Quickly replaying everything they had gone over in his mind, she had just walked them around to some of the more popular facilities and explained how to find what they were looking for. He didn't pay much attention to any of it though and figured he would take a look later, if Melody didn't drag him around herself, which he was expecting.

"Down this hall you'll mostly find restaurants. As I said before, they aren't organized at all and some of the portals aren't even indexed anymore. These Forgotten Portals were added so long ago, everyone's just forgotten about them."

Felix immediately noticed a few of his classmates perk up at the idea of finding some forgotten portal that held treasures or resources ripe for the picking.

All he could think about was how stupid that was and how the entire facility seemed like a logistical nightmare.

Ameryl looked around, seemingly confused for a moment then shrugged, "Can't think of anything else. Any questions?"

A few of the students in their class asked about or hit on her, which Felix pointedly ignored. Others asked about how many of the portals in the building were forgotten and her answer was even more fuel for his logistical nightmare, "No idea. People often find portals that are seemingly forgotten then tell no one about them and come back time and time again to profit off them. Like their own personal planet. This is your recruitment so this is the first time for many of you but Osgard is completely open. You can visit even without a recruitment, you just won't have access to trainers or dedicated leveling planets."

Melody looked eager to run off so Felix stepped away and just followed her, "How do they control how much time you use on the Beast and Resource planets? If a bunch of the portals are unknown and you can go anywhere you want, do they just have guards in front of the Resource and Beast planet portals?"

She chuckled in anticipation of Felix's reaction, "Honor system."

The disgust on his face was even better than she was expecting, "How does that make any sense?"

"If someone is abusing anything, you can report them. Some Elites that can tell if you're lying will come by and ask you point blank or a stealthy one will follow you. If they confirm the claim, the offender is banned for life and the person who reported them along with the elite that confirmed the claim, get to split a reward."

"That seems… trivially abusable."

"A lot of this place would be. It only works here though and is a lot less fragile that it seems. Everyone keeps the people below them in check. If an elite were abusing the system, some Demi-God would ban them. If a Demi-God is caught abusing the system, some God would. If they are caught abusing the system, they have to answer to Rhonan."

"So even if I can successfully lie to even you, some stealthy elite would just follow me and I'd get kicked out?"

"Yeah, more or less. It's also not super precise. No one is going to kick you out if you're in there for an hour and ten minutes. As long as you make a best effort."

She dragged him into a restaurant and picked out a table then ordered for them in a matter of seconds, definitely having been there before. Once she had, she looked back over at Felix and smiled, "The first time I ever came here, I remember some guy getting carried out of a beast portal by some Demi-God. They had been in there for a week but not because they were abusing anything. They overestimated themselves and ended up hiding in a cave, the beasts just outside trapping them. The Demi-God dragged them to a healer and they were fine. No punishment."

"That's…"

She shrugged, "Judging intent isn't too hard in most cases, for most people. Then there are wild cards like you and Peace. You could probably get away with it but… I wouldn't risk it."

"Fair enough."

"So." She leaned forward a little, "Tell me about your recruitments."

"They were fine. I climbed a bunch of mountains, met a God, upgraded a bunch of skills, Peace almost died but, then he didn't. He fought a God. I learned super secret magic. I made some machines. I made some spells. I read some books. I got some new skills. Moved some stuff around. Swapped out my head. Smuggled some re

The Spirit rolled in and looked around, carefully picked up a few things and looked around, in shock both by the contents of the room and the fact that the room existed. It was clearly its first time in the material world and the idea of a door segmenting spaces was completely foreign to it, as was the idea of not projecting its every thought into its surroundings apparently.

"Oh, by the way. I guess you don't really have a name, do you Spirit?"

The Spirit looked at him and emanated confusion as Tam chimed in from the other room, "Spirits don't need or use names. You just refer to someone by emanating a feeling of who they are."

Felix sighed, "That's great and all but, it's a little inconvenient here where people use language to communicate. How about we just call you Eni."

Oh god. Why didn't I interrupt you… Grim groaned in Felix's mind accompanied by the giggling of multiple Mental Constructs.

What? It's not that bad… is it?

No. Honestly, it might be the least bad one you've come up with but I am in your brain. You just took the word Engineer and cut it up.

Alright fine. From now on, you can name everything yourself.

Felix left Art and some of his Mental Constructs to manage Eni while he went off to work on everything else he had to do.