Chronicles of the True Wizard

Inside, Felix found a cube about half a meter to a side made of a uniform lustrous silver metal and a ring made entirely of what looked like a deep blue sapphire.

[E - Uncommon] Diving Ring

This ring increases your swim speed while completely submerged in water as well as protecting your lungs from water pressure.

Felix picked up the ring and put it on. Felix tried to put it on his middle finger but it was slightly too small. It fit perfectly on his right index finger though.

This is perfect for at least getting to the two underwater dungeons. A little too perfect, almost as if it was tailored for exactly that purpose.

[D - Epic] Skill Test Cube: Mana Control

A skill testing cube to test mana control.

AKA: Puzzle Box, Enigma Cube etc.

Wait what? Is that a mistake? It's D grade? This is one of those System finding a loophole in it's own rules thing, isn't it? I don't feel like I did anything particularly special on that test. I wonder if the cube even counts towards the reward or if it's just bonus. Uncommon makes sense to me for how I felt I did on that test, so that would make this extra. Maybe I got rare though and got this instead of a rare item?

Felix reached in and tried to pick up the box but found he couldn't lift it. He squeezed the sides of the box, but he couldn't get a good enough grip on it. He tried stowing it in his inventory, but nothing happened.

There is no way The System gave me something that I literally can't pickup right? It has to just be heavy, not that you literally are not allowed to interact with things in a higher grade right? That sounds dumb, plausible but I think it would be dumb. Please, oh great System.

Felix looked through his inventory and finally pulled out the Shivering Ivory Axe. He buffed his strength as much as he could with energy and tried to use the blade of the axe to get under the cube. He managed to get an edge of the box off the ground by just a centimeter or so then he used the axe and his hand to try and lift the cube. With his strength buffed by almost 70%, he barely managed to lift it off the ground and definitely couldn't move it.

Why am I trying to lift it at all? I should just solve it on the spot, if I can. I should at least attempt to solve it. I really hope the contents aren't as heavy as the cube is.

Felix sat down in front of the cube and pushed mana into it. Unlike his previous cube, all of the sides had a ring in their center light up. Felix started with the top side and pushed mana into the ring in the center. He felt the mana soak into the cube and spread out on the side in some sort of pattern. The cube didn't stop soaking up mana so he kept pouring it in and assumed it was just because of the grade. As he pushed mana into the cube, he also explored the pattern he was helping to fill. It had a large circle on the outside and some sort of geometric pattern within that all converged on something in the center of the ring. The whole pattern seemed awfully familiar to Felix.

HAH. Sneaky.

Felix realized what was happening, the pattern was a force spell form. He quickly confirmed his theory, checking each side and noticed that they all contained the same pattern filled with mana. Felix quickly drained the box of all mana, filling his own mana pool up slightly past the limit before dumping the rest into the atmosphere. Filling past the limit didn't seem to affect him though, so he didn't worry about it for now. After draining a ridiculous amount of mana, more than Felix had ever seen in one place, Felix reached forwards and picked up the cube.

It was still heavy at a few hundred kilograms, but it was possible to lift and move it. It was also possible for Felix to place it in his inventory. He decided he would figure out and finish solving the box later. He was excited to find out what was inside and slightly perplexed at it's grade and rarity, but he still had his routine and his schedule he wanted to maintain. He argued back and forth with himself until he finally caved and decided to attempt the cube for a maximum of a half hour tonight right before he slept.

Later that day, he found his first trap room of this dungeon, unfortunately it was an entirely mechanical trap with enchanted spikes. The enchantment would normally be cool, but it was basic and Felix had seen all of it's components before. He simply left the room the way he came and moved on. In the previous dungeon, the trap rooms didn't actually hold a reward for completing them, he was assuming these ones didn't either.

He found another 7 trap rooms which he ignored as they were simple mechanical traps with basic enchantments.

That night, Felix sat on the floor with the D grade puzzle box in front of him. He pushed mana into it and tried to figure out what the puzzle was. He moved his mana around the inlaid spell form and realized there were some extra lines around a single part of the spell form that weren't used in the original spell.

Ah shit. I was supposed to reverse the spell direction so that instead of resisting every force, it aided every force. Considering this thing takes way more mana than I have, I'm just gonna have to fill it with as much as I can every night and hope it fills eventually. Maybe I'll use my vortex thingy to pull ambient mana and fill it with that. Only after I figure out what's going on with that mana though.

Felix didn't have anything else to do so he emptied his mana pool, stowed the box and slept. After ten days of clearing as many rooms as he could, he had finally cleared every room in the dungeon except the testing room. It had taken him much less time than he had expected, he had been in the dungeon for a total of 16 days instead of the 3 and a half weeks he expected. He headed back to the test room, excited to finally be done with this dungeon.

In the testing room, Felix found two podiums and nothing else. He walked up to the one on the left and placed his hand upon it. Just past the podium, a tower shield appeared laying on the ground. A few moments passed and a pillar made of stone descended rapidly from the ceiling, like a hydraulic press down on the shield. The shield collapsed immediately and was crushed under the pillar. An enchanting table with an identical tower shield rose from the ground with a low rumble to Felix's left. Felix lifted his palm from the podium and noticed text had appeared on the podium.

"3 attempts remaining."

Felix walked over to the enchanting table and looked at the shield. He spent almost an hour pondering the enchantments to try before finally picking up an enchanting quill.

Many hours passed as Felix enchanted the shields. After he had enchanted the first one and tried to place it under the pillar, the dungeon asked if he would like to proceed with only a single submission. Felix declined and enchanted two more shields. He submitted them all for testing and stood at the podium nervously watching.

The first shield lay there as the pillar descended and smacked down on the shield with a loud ringing sound. Felix flinched when the pillar hit but opening his eyes, he sighed in relief as he saw the shield appeared to be undamaged. He definitely wasn't expecting it when the pillar descended again a few seconds later even faster this time. Felix jumped backwards as the shield shattered like glass.

I guess pure durability through hardness isn't the best option. Good to know. I wouldn't want to enchant my breastplate and have it explode into a million sharp pieces while I'm wearing it.

Felix expected it to shatter, but also thought there was only one descent with the pillar. He had thought for some reason he had to enchant three completely different enchantments and have them all survive. Looking down at the podium, he realized he was completely wrong.

"2 attempts remaining. Best score: 1"

The second shield was moved under the pillar and Felix was startled again as the pillar smacked down on to the shield. It rose slowly to reveal an undamaged shield then descended again even faster. The shield remained whole and undamaged. On the third strike, the shield was slightly deformed around the edges, but mostly intact. The fourth hit, the shield was noticeable bent but still mostly functional. On the fifth hit, the shield completely folded in half and gained a large hole right in the middle.

"1 attempts remaining. Best score: 4"

Huh, that was more of an experiment. I wasn't expecting that one to work so well. I think I need to do a lot more testing with the vampiric source. All I did was attach them to some force enchantments to resist the pillar. I didn't think it would generate enough mana to resist it at all, but it seems to have worked well.

The last shield appeared under the pillar and was smacked with a loud clang. Felix managed not to be startled this time by the pillar. The shield remained undamaged after the first, second and third strikes. On the fourth strike, Felix flinched as he watched the shield completely flatten itself then spring back into it's original shape a moment later. It remained undamaged, but failed the test anyways.

Yeah I wouldn't want to be behind that shield. I knew the shield would survive, but I didn't even really think about whether it would protect a person well, which sounds really stupid now that I think about it. Watching that fourth strike though, you would be a pancake for sure behind it. Mental note, full elasticity also not a great idea for a shield.

I'm relatively happy with four hits though, that seems reasonable.

Felix walked over to the other podium and placed his hand upon it. A slow rumble accompanied a large table with sheets of paper on it into the room on Felix's right. In front of the podium, an illusion created without a spell form Felix could sense appeared. The illusion depicted a javelin begin fired out of a spell form. To Felix's right, a table rumbled through the floor holding large sheets of paper and a quill with everlasting ink. Under his palm, instructions appeared.

"Recreate the spell as best you can. 1 attempt."

Felix walked over to the table and quickly drew out a simple spell form that would create a mana javelin and fire it straight forwards. It was a simple modification of Mana Dart, simply swap out the shape component and increase the pushing force. He had even tested and cast a very similar spell to this when he was experimenting with spell forms earlier in the dungeon.

Felix took the piece of paper and placed it on the podium. The paper disappeared and next to the illusion, Felix's spell fired parallel to the illusory javelin. Comparing them side by side, Felix noticed his javelin was bigger, the shape was slightly off and it fired way too fast. He had increased the force of the initial fire too much. Luckily it seemed to do the trick as the illusion changed as well as the text on the podium. The illusion now showed a large ball of fire being used to block icicles by swallowing them.

"Recreate the Pocket Star spell as best you can. 2 attempts."

Pocket Star, what an odd spell.

Felix walked over to the table and spent a solid half hour on his first attempt. He drew out a simple spell form that would create a large ball of fire and continue to channel fire into the ball to feed the star and sustain it's temperature. He realized half way through drawing that he didn't really need to worry about mana costs or efficiency, because it wasn't like he was the one that had to cast it. He oversized everything about the spell, except for the shape. The sun would appear the same size, but it should burn brighter, hotter and be more stable overall, all while costing maybe a 100 times more mana, by Felix's rough estimates.

He walked over to the podium and placed the drawing upon it. He figured if he was supposed to submit both attempts at once, it would warn him again. The paper instantly disappeared and the number of attempts remaining, written on the podium, decreased.

Felix watched as his Pocket Star appeared next to the illusion, similar in size but much brighter. Even the color of the fire was noticeably lighter. Felix watched as an icicle was fired at both of the stars. As expected, the icicle melted as soon at it got close to the star. Felix was relieved for just a moment, before another icicle fired. This time the icicle got closer, but still melted before fully passing through. 7 icicles were fired before finally, one of them passed through Felix's Pocket Star, but didn't make it through the illusory one.

Felix walked back over to the drafting table. He had an idea, inspired heavily by the name of the spell. Once he was finished with his new iteration, he walked over and submitted the spell. He could have simply made it consume another 100 fold more mana, but he didn't want to start relying on "just more mana" in all situations and he suspected it might cause it to fail as it would just be too different.

Felix watched as once again, 7 icicles were fired into both the illusory and Felix's rendition of the Pocket Star spell. This time, all 7 icicles made it into Felix's star, but none of them made it out. There were another 3 shots that were all swallowed entirely before the illusion changed to the next spell.

That looked way better and was overall way more efficient. In fact, that second iteration might actually be a useful spell with some tweaking in the future.

Felix had added a force component that simulated the gravity of a star, pulling everything around it inwards. This made it so that the fire and heat spread less, making it burn more efficiently, and also made it so that projectiles would get pulled in and sometimes trapped. He also added a bit of spin to the force and the fire because he liked the idea of a vortex, though he didn't think it added anything more than aesthetic value to the final outcome.

The illusion in front of Felix now depicted what looked like a firework, it even included a small explosion sound at the end. The particles shot out of the explosion were a random spattering of the primary colors and luckily didn't produce a shape of any kind, simply shot out in all directions producing a ball of rainbow lights.

"Create a firework spell. 1 attempts."

Only one attempt, damn. Going to half to cast this one myself till I get it right.

Felix walked over to the drawing table and pondered the problem. After 15 minutes of thinking, Felix had a few things he wanted to test. First he tested casting light on Mana Dart. It worked about as he expected, with some tweaking he could have the dart itself emanate light. Next he tested a bunch of things to create a timed explosion, but couldn't quite get it right. He moved on from that for the moment and began testing some other things. He managed to produce a bunch of tiny balls of mana, like ball bearings of solid mana. However, he suspected there was a way to make the shaping component of the spell much more efficient than just slapping together a bunch of tiny spheres in one outer ring.

He also managed to cast light on multiple objects and had the tiny spheres split into three, with a different color of light coloring each of the groups. He eventually decided to go with the crude solution of simply surrounding all of the tiny spheres in a bigger sphere and targeting a force node right in the middle. If he could tune the outer sphere to be a thin layer, he could time how long it took for the tiny balls to bore themselves out. Hopefully they maintained enough force to not simply spill out. Finally, he had the outer ball launched forwards.

He tested casting the spell himself, which took a long time as this was an extraordinarily complicated spell. There were dozens of nodes which meant a ton of connections to hold the whole thing together and a lot of luck to keep it all stable. It was like casting many spells at once, just in a single drawing.

Felix spent almost 30 minutes trying to cast it for his first time, which was a significant disappointment. The outer ball never broke, meaning it simply hit the far wall and fell to the ground with all the tiny spheres within. Felix spent a few hours tuning the thickness of the outer shell to best approximate the timing of the illusion before drawing out his final iteration on a sheet of paper and submitting it.

He watched with bated breath as both spells fired off into the air. He immediately noticed his was bigger, less accurate and visibly contained a multitude of lights, whereas the illusory one was a perfect projectile until it reached the apex of it's flight path. Both of the spells exploded and Felix found his version, especially side by side with the illusory one, disappointing overall. His particles did not form a nice circle in the air when they finally made it out of the outer shell he had created, which was slightly later than the illusory example. His spell was also poorly mixed with large chunks of individual colors traveling together.

It wasn't a terrible display, but Felix was disappointed his looked so different from the example, and so bad. He would have been ashamed to use that spell if, say Mike, king of partying, asked for magical fireworks. He would rather just launch Fire Bolts into the air.

The dungeon seemed to be happy, or at least satisfied with his spell though as a chest rose from the ground between the two podiums.

Felix opened the chest to reveal a massive stack of papers which he quickly looked through to update his own mental map.

How the hell did I manage to miss rooms? I mean, there are like a thousand, but I had a map. Oh well.

Felix was annoyed but he had enough energy to quickly run to the handful of rooms he had missed throughout the dungeon, most of them sat between the squares of his imaginary grid. They provided nothing new to him, but he did want to have it all completed.

Finally, with all of the lights on the paper map extinguished, Felix headed for the exit. He hadn't left anything in the rest room as he still brought his bed with him everywhere out of habit and paranoia. It was also still before noon, meaning if he wanted to get in another sleep and feast, he would be sitting around for over half a day.

Puzzle Dungeon A

Would you like to leave the dungeon?

Warning: You will be unable to retry this dungeon.

Yes

No

Yes.

Congratulations!

You have completed Puzzle Dungeon A.

Calculating Bonus Rewards.

+10000 Profession XP

Completionist Bonus: [E - Epic] Amphibian's Belt

Performance Bonus: 10,000,000 Tutorial Credits

You will be returned to the entrance in 3 seconds.

Ding You have gained 10 levels in [E - Special] Arcane Engineer

Oh shit, my profession surpassed my class in level, wild. All free points into intelligence.

Name: Felix Kade FREE 0

Level: 52 STR 390

Class: [E - Common] Caster (Lvl 51) DEX 390

Race: [E - Common] Human AGI 390

Profession: [E - Special] Arcane Engineer (Lvl 54) PER 390

Health: 7784/7800 VIT 390

Mana: 13486/15620 INT 781

Energy: 6453/7800 END 390

Also, why didn't I get a performance bonus last time? I felt like I did way better that time. Maybe the error of having no profession just bugged it out? I mean it is The System, I kind of hope it doesn't have "bugs". Not complaining about that ridiculous amount of credits though, I'll have to ask around see how much other people got, it seems high but maybe that was less than average?

Wait a second, where'd my belt go? . . . . .