Chronicles of the True Wizard

Before long, he felt his body slowing as it fell, reminiscent of feather fall. He managed to open his eyes and saw himself being lowered into the forest just a short distance from the docks. Right about where he was first dropped into the tutorial. Felix fell through the trees, something the rod didn't take into account, and broke branches where possible and pulled himself aside where it wasn't.

Felix landed softly on the forest floor. He didn't recognize his location at all, but it still felt nostalgic. It still reminded him of where he fought and barely killed an overgrown fox and ran from another. In many ways he was the same as back then, he knew nothing of the multiverse. He knew nothing much of anything really. He could move some mana, he was good at that.

He looked around and decided that this was exactly where he wanted to be for right now. He used his map to move slightly further from the dungeon and deeper into the forest to minimize his chances of encountering anyone.

He sat down and entered a meditation. His health was still low so he had to regenerate that first. In the past, he practiced his spell formation as he meditated, but he found himself hitting the point of diminishing returns with that. In the future might do it again, but for a while now he had gotten lazy and just relaxed in his meditation. There had been something he had been meaning to do for a while now with his meditation and though he doubted it would increase his combat strength any, he decided to pursue it now.

His Soul Space Meditation allowed him to transport himself somewhere where he could focus on something he brought with him. It was effectively removing distractions and replicating the object of his focus, as he sensed it, in his soul space. He had also previously reflected the environment on top of his tower in his soul space.

His interpretation of a soul space was not what the skill did though. What he thought a soul space should be, or would be, was either an actual space or pocket dimension within his soul, or an environment that reflected his soul. He wanted to attempt both. Since he had no idea where to start with transforming his soul space into a real place, he first worked on cultivating the environment.

If his soul space was going to represent him, the core of who he was, he was going to have to figure out what that meant. He didn't take it too seriously though and simply thought about his favorite places, the environments that he liked the most. The first thing that came to mind was a desolate forest.

He focused on that and realized it wasn't just a forest, it was a serene forest, one without danger. He wanted a calm body of water, perfectly clear water. He also wanted colorful plants and pleasant smells. He wanted it all perfectly arranged, laid out meticulously. Were it to become a real space at some point though, he would need some functional space too.

He started with a wide clearing in a dense forest. In his soul space, he imagined a forest that radiated serenity, as his soul space was essentially his imagination, it transformed to be so. In the center of the clearing, he wanted a small lake, fed by a cascading water fall, each level a pond of it's own, and so it appeared. He wanted the lake to flow out into a river that disappeared into the forest. He didn't need the output to balance the inputs as the lake was imaginary, but he wanted it to be balanced, he wanted it to make sense.

He wanted a wooden bridge made of fragrant cedar with a simple railing to cross over the river, and so it appeared. He wanted trees with flowers and delicious fruits, advertising hints of vibrant colors, and so they appeared. In the center of the lake, he imagined a floating disc of wood, one that he could sit on and ponder difficult problems, and so it appeared. He added an area with sand and an area with flowers. He had a field and he had stones to sit upon. He had an area he could work with a large natural wooden table. He scrutinized every detail until he looked upon the landscape and smiled. It radiated serenity and balance, exactly as he had planned. Most of all, it resonated with him, it felt right.

When he was finished, he checked on his health bar which was just over half full. He felt like he had spent a while in his soul space, but he also knew it had some amount of time dilation as well.

**Ding You have successfully upgraded the General Skill [Soul Space Meditation (Special)] to: [Soul Garden Meditation (Epic) You began your journey on the path of meditation by focusing your mind and eliminating distractions. You have now replaced those distractions, carefully curating an environment to keep yourself calm and centered. When you meditate, you enter a metaphysical space within your own soul containing a garden. This place does not exist. The garden resonates with your soul and will keep you calm and focused. This skill can be upgraded. Your Mana, Energy and Health restore themselves at an increased rate while inside of your soul garden (x10). The passage of time while within your soul garden is altered based on your Intelligence. (Current dilation: 29.83% normal time)]

The time dilation was going to be very handy for Felix to grow strong enough to beat the Griffin. Before he started working on that though, he exited his meditation and climbed a tree as he hoped to avoid rogue enemies. He found himself a large branch to sit upon and reentered his soul garden.

His first order of business, was his cores. If he was going to experiment with new spells and abilities, he wanted all of the mana and energy he could get. His old cores were a foolish attempt in hindsight. They were foreign objects implanted within his body, not a part of it. Unfortunately, he couldn't just modify his body however he wished, so he tabled real mana channels for one of his evolutions, where he would force them into existence. He had time to plan those out though so instead he worked on his cores for now.

In the battle, he wasn't sure where his cores had broken, but he knew how, he felt it. His cores had collided with the shell surrounding them and ripped right through them due to their high velocity. He had implanted a solid object containing another with a high velocity within his body, he cringed at how stupid he had been. When he thought about it now, it was obvious. Why did he have the core inside of his body at all? For some reason he had assumed it wasn't possible, but thinking about it now, he had never actually tried it. He could simply have a core within the mana dimension, implanted in his mana pool. Or rather, transform his mana pool to contain a core. No implanted foreign objects, just an upgrade through minor transformation.

He would still have mana flow through his blood stream though, to help regenerate energy. He was also going to attempt to have an energy core in his mana pool as well, simply using his pool as the medium for it to travel through and exist within. His first step, was to figure out what his mana pool was. He was surprised he hadn't explored this sooner but now was as good a time as any. He expected his mana pool to be a pool of ambient mana that had an affinity for him, essentially just following him around within the mana dimension.

The reality was, it was between the ambient mana and the physical world. It was a pool of mana that had an affinity for Felix, shaped like his body, no, his soul. It was so close to his physical body though, that it was like it was constantly touching him, or rather, his soul. Rather than touching though, he realized it was attached to him, it was a part of him. It was like a bubble and resembled a tumor, but was meant to be there.

Felix didn't want to have to actively focus on regenerating mana if he could get away with it, so he was going to create something akin to a mana engine. He would have a core that would spin creating a vortex that reached towards and pulled on the ambient mana. He also wanted to change the core itself.

He wasn't sure why he was limiting himself to liquid mana, instead he would have a gradient of solid mana in the middle all the way out to ambient mana on the outside. The solid mana would then keep momentum, he hoped. He thought about making an actual pump, with a propeller of solid mana, but he wanted it to naturally compress the mana. This, though physically impossible without his or The System's will, would compress the mana as it was sucked in.

The idea of a pump though did give him an interesting idea, he could effectively create a large drum that would spin, creating something like the spin cycle on a wash machine. The mana would be forced to the outside with centrifugal force and be compressed naturally. He created a small model, but it was no more efficient than manually creating an artificial vortex so he went with that instead.

He solidified mana into a ball, like he had with his temporary mana batteries except this time he kept the ball in his mana pool. He wasn't sure it would work at first, but it seemed it was completely possible for solid mana to exist anywhere it wanted, within the ambient mana's spatial dimension or not. Once he was done with that, he compressed his pool until it was liquid mana and surrounded the solid ball with it. Finally, he started spinning it.

His next step was to create an outlet for it to saturate his blood stream once again, but he decided he didn't want to create and implant another brittle solid object. He somehow had to create solid mana that was flexible. Before that though, he quickly put together a second core with mana that was much less dense that didn't pull from the ambient mana at all for his energy core. It too, existed within his mana pool.

Felix was roughly familiar with why some objects were solid and some were flexible. He also knew that solid mana resembled a crystal, but he wasn't sure if that had to be the case, or if Manaverse had misled him and it was just how he had been doing it up until now. Mana didn't have constituent particles as far as Felix knew, it simply was. Being crystalline didn't really make any sense, not that having it as a solid at all made much sense either. Felix tried to solidify mana and have it be flexible but he didn't know how, and his attempts to will it to be so were not fruitful. The only other thing he knew about mana, was that it could have an attunement, energy level and affinity.

He first tried energy levels as there were a ton of attunements he would have to test. Felix pulled out a temporary battery and liquified the whole thing, then he gave it an energy level, about half of the maximum he had ever seen, and resolidified it. He held the ball in his hand, which felt bigger than before, and luckily, squishy. Experimenting with attunements resulted in odd properties but nothing he was looking for. Changing the mana's density on the other hand seemed to change it's elasticity if it was flexible or just it's tensile strength when it was hard.

That was easier than I thought, and also right under my nose the whole damn time.

Felix tuned the energy levels and density until the flexibility and elasticity was just right then memorized that energy level and density. He created tiny tubes running from his mana and energy core into his stomach. He also created flexible, solid, threads from the useless tissue in his gut into his energy core.

Ding Your Racial Trait Mana Core has been reactivated.

Ding Your Racial Trait Mana Core has been modified.

Ding Your Racial Trait Energy Core has been reactivated.

Ding Your Racial Trait Energy Core has been modified.

Ding Your General Skill Core Energy Infusion has been reactivated.

Racial Traits.

[Mana Core (Rare) Your mana pool has been shaped to contain a mana core. Cores can have many different sizes, shapes, and effects. Your core will spin drawing mana from the ambient mana and compressing it into a liquid. Your core has the following effects: +100 x Intelligence Mana, +500% Passive Mana Regeneration Rate]

[Energy Core (Rare) Your mana pool has been shaped to contain an energy core. Cores can have many different sizes, shapes, and effects. Your core will spin drawing energy from your body, mixing it with mana and compressing it. Your core has the following effects: +30 x Endurance Energy, +1000% Passive Energy Regeneration at the cost of mana]

He wasn't trying to make them bigger, but he also wasn't constrained by the physical size of his body anymore. The passive mana regeneration was a huge upgrade though, especially since it was abysmally slow before. His next step was to start working on spells. . . . . .