Chronicles of the True Wizard

Felix enchanted the breastplate with a simple durability and weight enchantment. With wood, he went with hardness, as it was generally pretty soft, and internal strength to hold it together. The weight enchantment was just to show off so he made it almost half as heavy as it normally was. He drew out the enchantment on the inside of the breastplate so it wouldn't be damaged in combat. It took him just over 20 minutes so he quickly threw a simple light enchantment on the front which made an entirely cosmetic drawing glow.

When he was finished Felix looked up to see Henry managing five different projects, one at each of his five forges. Henry also occasionally looked over his shoulder at Felix, which caused him to realize he was finished. Henry moved some things around so his projects didn't need to be monitored then turned around. Felix handed him the breastplate which he started inspecting with his hands, tongs, hammer and a sword. He didn't seem very impressed however.

"Seems decent enough. It's definitely… pretty? I'm not sure what it was before this though so I'm not sure I-"

Oh shit, right.

Felix pulled another three training breastplates out of his inventory and handed them to Henry. He tested those and then the enchanted one again back to back and was much more impressed. "Huh, alright not bad. I have a few commissions on the back burner and I'm meeting some clients tomorrow. I'll offer them to have their stuff enchanted and I'll give you 30%?" Henry offered.

"Sure." Felix shrugged. Henry was put off by the fact that Felix didn't haggle at all but he quickly accepted.

I really don't give a shit about the credits.

"How do I reach you if they agree?"

"Send someone to the tower or tell Noah I guess?"

Do we have a mail system or something like that? Couriers?

"Alright, sounds good. Anything else? Need armor yourself?"

"Nope, I'm good. Alright well, I'll maybe see you later then." Felix waved and walked out.

"Sure, sounds good. I'll keep Noah up to date about the cannons and stuff too, I assume he'll let you know?"

Probably, not that I super care.

"Yeah, he'll keep me up to date."

Felix left the forge and headed quickly over to the library. He made sure to replace his disguise with the same level as before along with a random face. Felix was just about done with people for the day, but he figured the library should be fairly quiet. He was also done with exploring the city and his mind turned back to looking for a clue with respect to attunements and energy levels.

He walked the short distance towards the wall surround the Vault's grounds then through the forest surrounding the building itself. Inside he looked for anything he could find on physics, math and chemistry. He had already checked through the mana sections as well as the course catalogue and was sorely disappointed. He hoped he might be able to find some sort of inspiration among the more mundane subjects. He referenced the libraries index which he had previously scanned, but was updated constantly, meaning he had to rescan the physical book. He plotted a course through the chemistry then physics and finally math sections of the library.

There were many more books in these sections than the magic sections he browsed previously. Unfortunately, he didn't find much in the chemistry section just by skimming through a few books. He did make sure to scan the whole section though which just meant he had to walk through it slowly. He headed on to the physics section which was more of the same though there were some interesting tidbits in the quantum physics section, not that he understood much of it. He saw some interesting notes on the spin of a particle and string theory in general that just seemed more applicable. He made sure to mark all of those books mentally after he scanned the whole section. He suspected math would be the least useful as it was a long shot in general.

Finally in the math section, Felix encountered something he didn't expect at all, another person. The previous sections he had explored in the library on this and the past occasion were completely void of other people. This section had a young man with black hair sitting against one of the shelves with dozens of books all around him, some open, some piled high.

[E - Common] Human (Lvl 12)

[E - Common] Healer (Lvl 3)

[E - Uncommon] Mathematician (Lvl 22)

Felix walked through and scanned the entire section without the man noticing him. Just as Felix was about to leave and go through the books mentally, the man addressed him, "Oh uh, sorry about the mess. Were you looking for something in particular? Cause I have all the most interesting ones around me. I can let you know when I'm done with them, if that's alright?"

"Just looking around."

"Ah I see, I like to do that too. This library and all these books are the most fascinating and wonderful things I have ever seen. There are books on every subject you could imagine in here. Back on earth we theorized about things, here there's a textbook that perfectly explains it, in full. There are also things we had never thought of before. I'm sure whatever you are looking for, it's probably here."

"I kind of doubt that, but you might be right." Felix started to walk away but the man addressed him again.

"Well, what are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it and learn something myself along the way. Don't think it's just for selfless reasons, I don't know where to start with half of this stuff and some direction, even if it isn't mine could help me learn too."

What the hell, why not? This guy also seems like the most genuine guy I've met, the earrings think so too. He just really wants to help people and learn stuff himself.

"Were you a mathematician before the integration too?"

"Ah, yes I was a professor before the integration, mathematics. I could not however, read every book in every language before, now I can. How'd you guess my profession? Just from the books?"

Oh right, not everyone can see that.

"It's a skill" Felix shrugged.

"Ah, fascinating. So many things that were once impossible are now a daily occurrence. Anyways, what is it you're looking for?"

Felix sat down across from the man, against the opposite book shelf, "Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm looking for inspiration I guess. I'm having trouble figuring something out and I want to understand what's happening first."

The man simply waited for Felix to continue, clearly practiced with helping other's through difficult problems that were hard to explain.

"I'm observing an effect and I want to know why it's happening. I know what's happening, from a high level, but I want to be able to replicate the effect in a less involved way."

The man simply waited again and Felix sighed and continued after a few moments.

"Basically I have this… thing and it's fundamental properties seem to be changing when I spin it at different speeds and orbits. I want to change it's properties, problem is, I want to do so without having to spin it."

"I see." The man finally responded, "Hmmm, I don't have much information but maybe I can point you in the right direction. I'm more of a math guy, but electrons and other fundamental particles, I think, had a property we used to call spin but only sort of if I remember correctly, so you could look there. Within math, you could look into harmonics maybe? The relation to spinning is very loose but there's Fourier transforms, signal theory and frequencies? It's not perfect but from what you've said I can't stop thinking about frequencies and harmonics, so maybe look there?"

"Alright, I'll look into it. I appreciate the help."

"Not sure if I was any yet, but I always enjoy trying to figure out a problem. Feel free to come back if you need anything else."

"I appreciate it… Are you just… always here?"

"Sort of, I plan on reading through all of the books in this section first, then maybe a different section. I don't really feel the need to do much else, I have enough credits to eat and no one seems to mind if I sleep here so I'm gonna do what I always wanted since I don't have to work. I just hope I don't get kicked out eventually for my low level… I don't have much to do other than hit the puzzle dungeons, but the others are a little too far for me to check out for now. I don't really want to fight either so."

This guy is gonna run out of credits eventually… Damn.

"Have you thought of the pacifist option?"

"I don't know what that is, I don't exactly get out much."

"You can give up on fighting and ever doing damage to others. In exchange your profession is improved or you pickup a second profession and you lose your class."

"Oh… That's interesting. How would I start the process or…"

"I'm not sure, you'd have to ask around. I know Ray the barber took the option as well as Mike who runs Tiki Kahuna."

"Ah I see, I'll see about that next time I get out then."

"Well I appreciate the help. I also hope you don't get kicked out. Thank you, what was your name by the way?"

"Oh, I'm Charles, pleasure."

"Felix, thanks again."

Felix headed out back to his tower. As much as Charles was friendly and pleasant, Felix was a little exhausted from all the people. He had one last stop though before he could re-enter the comfortable solitude, which was luckily on the way.

Once that was done he headed back up to the top of his tower and began sifting through the books he had scanned in the library. His Mind Palace was becoming much less bare and started to look more like a library, at least in some sections. He pulled out all the books he could find that referenced harmonics first. He would come back for Fourier and signals later if he didn't find anything.

He spent a few hours reading through the books and gathering from them what he could. He understood everything that was being said, but he didn't understand the concepts themselves, they just didn't click for him. Overall though, he understood mostly what was going on. He figured if he had had a more math focused background it would have been easier. The one thing he did get out of it that kept resonating with him was frequencies.

It was a loose theory at best, but spinning something at a different speed was essentially a different frequency and it's possible the larger orbit translated to a larger amplitude. Though that theory presented a problem, it was possible to have high energy level mana with no attunement, he had seen it before. That would be impossible if unattuned mana didn't have a frequency, but maybe it was it's own frequency or something.

The other problem, which was why he was still reading, was that this theory didn't help him in any way. Whether or not it had anything to do with frequencies, he didn't know how to alter it's frequency without vibrating or spinning it. Eventually though, he came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to find anything else of value in the books so he simply shelved them for now and returned to reality.

He sat on the roof of his tower with a storm brewing above him. The sky was already dark as it was just an hour to midnight now and the sun had long since set. With the clouds smothering any light coming from the celestial bodies above, the night was almost pitch black. The only sources of light were from the torches lit along the roads down in the city. Some of them had been blown out by the winds but, no one seemed to care. The city was nearly empty now in preparation for the storm, and from Felix's vantage, it seemed empty.

Felix decided to try one thing before he headed inside. He pulled out a simple ball of mana and attuned it the old fashioned way, by spinning it. Then he pulled out an equally sized ball of mana next to it. He closed his eyes and had the balls of mana appear before him in his soul space. Focusing on the attuned ball of mana, Felix stared at it trying to discern a difference between the two. He tried to understand the differences he sensed as frequencies. That didn't seem to change anything but he wasn't done yet.

Next he stared at the unattuned ball and tried to imagine it beginning to oscillate internally. He wasn't sure what mana was made of, and he doubted it was any of the elementary particles he had heard of. Instead he imagined the mana itself slowly vibrating at the same frequency as the other ball. He had no idea how fast that was so he slowly increased the speed of the oscillations in his imagination.

He was about to give up as his mental image was vibrating almost as fast as he could imagine before suddenly he felt a change. It wasn't the right attunement, but it was an attunement. The mana looked purple, the color he imagined for an electricity attunement, and it was bright. This was possibly the highest energy level he had ever seen from mana. It frightened him a little bit so he imagined damping it until it was more normal. He successfully damped the attunement, but he also completely snuffed it out, removing all energy from it entirely. Ultimately though, he had succeeded, and just in time as he realized it had started raining.

Felix descended back down into the tower, just a single floor to his bedroom and laid down to sleep for the night. He was excited to have finally figured out attunements and energy levels, but he also had a lot of work ahead of him to perfect it. Currently, he mostly felt satisfaction that he had made any progress and relief from the past few days of frustration and that, was a wonderful feeling to fall asleep with. . . . . .