The fire tornado intensified and caused the temperature to climb. I reacted by waving my fan and cooling us off.

“Heh, so you’re finally using your fan normally?” Mishelly said with an annoying smirk.

“You can turn into a baked rabbit if you don’t like it. I might have some salt somewhere.”

“Uhh, no thanks.”

Benji was just observing. I wanted to attack but he has seniority. I might be nearing the 3 millennia mark in my age but my combat experience is about 30-40 years.

“Azu, can you kill the flames of that tornado in 1 hit? Taking too long with water magic might cause steam to build up which would caue problems breathing. Only go for large volumes of water.”

I nodded and sent a [Tsunami] at the fire tornado.

A tsunami or a fire tornado. What would win?

The tsunami crashed into the fire tornado and almost defeated it. Large [Azure Sharks] went out and tore the weakening fire tornado to shreds.

It seemed to be close to defeat when everything froze. My [Azure Aura] protected me yet again and I could break out of the ice before it would prevent any of my actios. Benji had jumped up and evaded but Mishelly’s feet had gotten caught in the ice.

“Benji, I will thaw Mishelly’s legs. Can you keep that thing busy?”

I applied heat to the ice to free her legs.

“Go faster!”

“Mishelly I can’t. Heating up your feet too fast might damage them. They seem almost frozen solid...”

It had been just a brief moment but the fire tornado had almost claimed 2 lives by freezing the area. It was skilfully displaying a ruth that often goes unnoticed; the true identity of fire magic.

It’s in the back of the minds of the Misha but other races don’t seem to be aware that fire magic is more accurately described as ‘Temperature Magic’. My affinities include both fire and water so cooling and freezing with my fire affinity isn’t needed but it is very possible to use attacks related to low temperatures with a fire affinity.

It would require awareness and practice for this however so knowing this fact won’t help most individuals with a fire affinity.

Everyone knows that fire is a strong element but adding cold to its repertoire makes it terrifying. Melting the ice won’t affect it as it could choose to continue freezing or shift back to fire.

Multiple thick vines assaulted the ice tornado and petals like large blades ripped into the tornado.

Benji threw his dagger which blew a hole into the tornado.

“Whoa! Gramps, what was that?!”

“Nothing much, just an ancient magical weapon at work. It seems that it’s my only shot at defeating this thing unless you have any ideas Azu.”

I shook my head as I was occupied in freeing Mishelly’s feet. I had to chug some focus and energy drinks as I got sleepy and unfocused.

“That’s a bad time for your [Acedia] to kick in. Can I help?”

“Pour as much mana into your feet as possible. It will help with the thawing.”

Mishelly cooperated and her feet were freed 10 minutes later. She couldn’t stand on htem however as they were numb.

“I will be fine, go help gramps.”

Is what she said but what can I do? The ‘hot’ side of fire magic is easy to counter. The ‘cold’ side is too but a fire user using the ‘cold’ side implies that he or she can freely switch and countering hot with water and cold with fire wouldn’t work.

It then struck me. I can use another magic element which could be considered unfairly strong.

“Benji. Move aside. I’m going to use spatiotemporal magic.”

“Wait here?!” Benji hopped away as I pointed my fan at the icy tornado.

It had kicked up cold dry winds which is terrible for my skin. “Eat this!”

I swung my fan and a spatial rip opened up and sucked the ice tornado in. The hall warmed up as the cold tornado was getting sucked in. It resisted for a bit but disappeared moments later. An item dropped before the spatial rip closed.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was different than what I normally do and it had drained a lot of mana.

“That...took more mana than I expected.” I wanted to sit down and rest but the item piqued my interest.

“Is your mana doing ok Azu? Spatiotemporal magic isn’t known for going easy on mana reserves.” Benji said as he applied nature energy to me to help me recover faster.

“I know, it’s fine. Let’s see what this is. It looks like a lens.”

I was holding a disk of glass, resembling a lens. It had 3 crystals attached to the side. The crystals resembled fire.

I looked through the lens and Benji stopped me moments later. “Look, it looks like a flame crystal is going out. It started when you looked through the lens. We mightneed it to look at something specific.”

I was taken aback by how observant Benji was. Then again, it must be the reason why he reached an age of over 7000 years. Strangely enough, there aren’t many immortal beings that have made it through the Great Eraser so most are about my age or a bit older. Around the 2000-3700 year range.

A Misha had attempted to find out why this was but because immortals are quite difficult to find and interact with her research had been discontinued and the council had kicked her out of Witchaven for wasting time and funds.

“Hehe, what if it translates that shitty text?!” Mishelly took the lens and peered through it at a wall. “Oh, it was just a joke but it seems to work...”

The flame crystal dimmed completely and the nest one started to dim slowly.

“Mishelly, what does it say?”

“Uhh, no clue. It’s so cryptic!”

I took a look and it seemed like words intermixed with mana runes. Mana runes I recognized. The problem was that these flame crystals seemed like some sort of timer. So I stopped using the lens.

“This might be the key to solving the puzzle. However...”

I showed the lens which had one crystal fully lit and the second one half dimmed.

“It seems to have a time limit. We might have to fight more tornadoes for more lenses and I hate that idea.” I shivered at the thought of fighting more of those tornadoes. I might have a lot of mana but it isn’t infinite. If every pillar turns into a tornado, we might be here for a while.

Benji came up with the idea to have me decipher the cryptic messages as I would be the most suited for that. We would use the remainder of this lens to have me write down as much as possible. We would fight another tornado and use it’s lens to continue until I would be able to solve the puzzle.

“Hey, Azu, gramps. What happens if we somehow use up all of the pillars?”

Benji looked up to the ceiling and we followed his gaze. The ceiling had red hot spikes pointing down. “Does that answer your question? It seems we have 25 tries left. The ceiling might even fall before the remaining 25 pillars drop.”

A lot of pressure but nothing compared to having my research papers getting mocked in front of the council.

I got to work and wrote everything down until the lens disappeared. I had expected it to be difficult but it was a basic letter shift cipher. It had a corresponding mana rune which also got translated. It might not be the same but they might have similar functions.

“Guys, I think I need 1 more lens to figure this out.”

I took another focus and energy drink and got ready to defeat the tornado with another [Spatial Tear]. Mishelly touched 2 random wall tiles which lit up yellow before dimming. Another pillar broke free and a fire tornado approached us.

This fight was simple. The tornado and a large chunk of mana disappeared after using [Spatial Tear]. A lens had been left behind and I got to work.

The writings on the walls seemed to refer to another missing half. Matching them might be the key.

2 halves got matched 5 minutes later and a tile lit up green and a transparent green mana trail flowed from the tile to the door.

Multiple tiles followed after and the whole floor had been turned green and the door opened.

“That...was exhausting.” I sat down to rest and placed my notebook next to me.

“I surely hope that not every puzzle is like this. Forget dying to monsters or flaming pillars. I might die due to my head exploding.”

I wasn’t physically tired but the mental fatigue was real. [Acedia] tried to creep up on me and I chugged more drinks.

Forget dying due to my head exploding from these puzzles. [Acedia] might put me to sleep before that happens.

“Guys, my [Acedia] is acting up. I’m sorry but I think it’s best if I minimize my participation in mentally taxing problems.”

“Understandable. Stay with her Mishelly. I will investigate the door. I want to find out if staying here to rest is a good or bad idea. We don’t want the door to close on us and have to repeat this puzzle.”

Benji hopped along and inspected the door.

I looked through my notes and the new mana runes I had learned. The cipher was to solve this puzzle but what were the mana runes for? Did we miss a rule? Is it for another puzzle or to throw us off?

Benji returned and he shook his head. “The next area seems hazardous but nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. It’s a large hall with monsters and fire pits. We should be fine if we’re careful but we better rest here.

Benji used his mysterious ability again to find out how much rest we needed. Mishelly needed 23 minutes but I needed an hour.

“Almost 3 hours will have passed after our rest. This spire seems odd.” Benji pointed at the next room.

“We should go up but there is another closed door at the end of that room. It’s a possibility that it leads to the next floor but reaching the top might take a while.”

Getting inside this spire was tedious and this puzzle hall was tedious. Would the next room be simple and require us to just defeat monsters?

Benji and Mishelly started arguing as Benji wanted to talk about friendship and family and Mishelly wanted to talk about strategy.

What would lie at the end of the spire? Wealth? Glory? Or death? Would it have a self-destruct button? That would be nice. The towers are ruining the landscape. The best reward would be an auto-demolition button.

Would this spire have something that convenient?

“Benji, can I see your magic circles? I want to compare these mana runes with the ones from your racial skills.”

Benji created a magic circle containing foreign mana runes. None seemed to match with the ones I had written down. How many mana runes are there even?

Magic is becoming stranger and stranger. 99.9% of Kaledon has the mana runes I’m familiar with. The humans and rabbits on this continent have them too but their racial skills use the same system but other writing. Same as the fairies. Same as these ancients.

If magic is a language. Are these different dialects? Or is ‘magic’ synonymous to ‘language’ and are these collections of different mana runes languages themselves?

Then why use normal words? I couldn’t think of an answer and my information was lacking. This tower might reveal more about magic.