I had a theory as to how I could find the altar of Hiradelle. Sure, I could just turn right back around and ask the god of death which one it was, but I already had a pretty good idea of where I might be able to find it.
98 seemed like a really strange number of altars for this room to have. I was sure I had counted it right, as I’d even double checked shortly after my discussion with the old man. If anybody saw a room with ninety eight altars in it, the first question they may ask themselves is why weren’t there one hundred? I doubted the tutorial couldn’t be bothered to make two more altars. To me, the answer seemed pretty simple. Two of the one hundred altars were hidden.
One of these two probably belonged to a god of illusion. I had basically no hope of finding that one. The other I was almost certain belonged to the god I was looking for. If you were a god who focused on dimension magic, why would you want somebody who couldn’t even peer into separate dimensions.
I did another lap of the pantheon, using my dimension sight in one eye while my other remained unaffected. It was definitely a little jarring to have one eye see everything with a blue tint while the other didn’t, but I was slowly getting used to it.
After a bit of walking, I finally found my target. An inconspicuous, completely mundane alter. The aura coming off of it was definitely weaker than that of the death god I’d met, but still many orders of magnitude more powerful than my own. The altar was only visible through the eye that was using dimension sight, and was completely invisible to my other eye. Actually, invisible wasn’t even the right term. That altar just straight up didn’t exist in the world my left eye was seeing. Reaching out and trying to touch the altar proved fruitless as well. My hand simply passed through as it was not within the dimension the altar sat within.
My brows furrowed in concentration as I attempted to mimic the feeling of casting a spell through my aura, to have it move through a higher dimension and arrive somewhere else. My hand slowly began to glow blue, and while I could still see it with my normal vision, a faint outline of it was now visible through dimension sight. Placing my hand on the altar now, I could feel it and touch it.
The world around me turned a deep royal blue, without my dimension sight having been a part of it. deactivating dimension sight, I could see that I was still within the pantheon, and standing directly behind the altar was a tall man wearing a regal blue robe. He had an aged face, but not elderly as the previous god I had spoken with had.
“I see you have at least a passable grasp of our school of magic.” The man says, looking down at me.
“Are you Hiradelle?” I ask.
“Indeed I am. I assume you’ve spoken to one of my fellow prisoners.”
“Yeah.” I say, pointing in the general direction of the death gods altar. “I spoke with him. He said you may be a decent choice of god to work with.”
“Work with?” The man says, frowning. “I believe you have misunderstood. Nobody works with me. You serve me and obey me. I will be your god and-”
I remove my hand from the altar, and everything returns to normal. There is a brief pause before the aura given off by the alter flares with anger. I just ignore it and walk away. While walking, I feel another aura within the room slightly strengthen. It is the altar of one of the several gods of life. It almost feels like it is amused at what just happened. I consider walking over to the altar and speaking with the god, but decide against it. There was very little chance I would be following a god that had such a wildly different path than myself. I guess I was considering joining up with a god of death, but that was different. Totally different.
I returned to the old man’s alter once more, placing a hand on it. When I appear in his grayscale field once more, I see a slight grin on his face.
“You really pissed off Hira didn’t you.” He says, chuckling.
“Perhaps. How do you know? I thought you all couldn’t see the pantheon itself.”
“We can’t, but I can feel the auras of all the gods around me. He is a fairly young god, and much like how a child wears their emotions on their face, a young god wears them on their aura.”
“I didn’t even know aura could be affected so subconsciously.” I say, shaking my head. “Being here has already made me realize how little I’ve scratched the surface when it comes to these things.”
“That is why I could help you. I know nearly all their is to know about aura and a lot about general mana control-”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Yeah, you don’t have to keep trying to sell me on it. I’ve already decided you’d probably be my best option.”
“Splendid.” The old man says, sticking out his hand. “Just shake my hand, and you will have my support.”
“This isn’t like a ‘sell my soul’ kind of handshake right?” I ask, hoping I was making the right choice.
“Of course not.”
“Just making sure.” I say, finally shaking the old mans hand.
You have chosen to be sponsored by Talus, Harvester of Souls
You have completed Floor 26
Welcome to floor 27: Lessons of Old
“Harvester of souls, huh?” I ask, looking at the old man.
“Yes, that is what I’m known for.” Talus says, nodding. “Many fear the title, but in truth it isn’t as terrifying as it sounds. Not that it matters right now, as for the next several floors, my goal is to prepare you for the rest of the tower. Tell me, how much time do you have remaining in this tutorial?”
“About 150 days.”
His eyes widen slightly. “That is definitely more than I was expecting. That should give us plenty of time to prepare you though. I can tell you for a fact that you are approaching the first great wall of power, being level 99. It is easy to break through this wall and reach level 100, but like any obstacle it will slow your momentum.”
“So you are going to try and give me as much ‘momentum’ as you can before I reach that level?”
“Exactly. If we were outside of the tutorial I would certainly spend quite a bit of time doing this, we are on a bit of a time limit, and I cannot have you falling behind. We are going to have to rush this and complete these next few floors quickly.”
“What even is the goal of these floors?” I ask. “The notification that I’d made it to floor 27 didn’t specify an objective.”
“The goal of this floor is to be trained by whatever god you chose in preparation for the next few floors. Each floor is complete when your god decides you are ready to move on. For floor 28, it will be about performing services for your god. For 29, it is all about dealing with worshippers of other gods. Floor 30 is where you will either decide to split off from your patron or to stay tethered to them for the remainder of the tower.”
“So if you are the deciding factor on if I have completed a floor or not, you could get me through them basically instantly?”
“I can, yes. But we are going to cheat the system a bit. This floor is the only one in the entire tower where we will be able to converse so directly and regularly. If you have yet to notice, you can take your palm off of the altar now.”
I do so, and the gray field we stand in doesn’t go away.
“You are now in my divine domain.” Talus says. “Until the day I decide you are ready, I will train you to become a master of your aura and everything within it.”
__________
“Aim for its eyes, they’re the only exposed weak point!” Blair yells, firing another bullet of mana out of her rifle. The bullet flew through the air, hitting the cheekbone of the titan, which was currently over a kilometer away. She frowned at the inaccuracy of the shot, taking a tool from her storage ring and tweaking a few parts of the weapon.
Flynn and Andrea both nodded, running towards the titan. Each of them focused heavily on the body stat, and quickly ate up the distance between them and their target. Flynn leapt into the air and swung his sword at the face of the titan, leaving a superficial wound behind as he used the cloak of flight to dodge the hand that attempted to grab him.
Andrea also leapt up, slamming a large metal gauntlet into the knee of the titan. She felt something give as her fist made impact, and she knew she’d managed to do some internal damage.
The three of them slowly chipped away at the titan as time dragged on. Blair would constantly shoot for the raid boss’ face, attempting to blind it by shooting an eye out. Flynn began to focus on the more fleshy parts of the monster, using a combination of several skills to cut deep gouges in its torse, thighs, and arms. Andrea did her best to immobilize the monster by slowly turning its ankle and feet into worthless puddles.
Eventually, the monster fell backwards, landing right on its rear. It roared and slammed both fists down onto the ground. Walls of stone sprouted up all around them, with Blair being outside of the range of the wall.
As the walls closed in, the titan sustained more and more damage from the repeated onslaught of blows. This wasn’t to say that Flynn and Andrea were doing too hot, as they each had taken quite a bit of damage. Small cuts littered their bodies where debris from thrown rocks had grazed them. They were both heavily bruised, and the bones in Andrea’s arms had fractures from repeatedly punching with such great force.
The fight was finally ended when a supercharged bullet of mana smashed through the closing in walls of earth, piercing through the ear of the raid boss and exiting the other side of the monster’s head. Andrea leapt up to the head and used one of her more powerful skills to release a wave of force into the wound, reducing the brain of the monster to mush.
After the fight was over and Andrea received confirmation of Flynn’s pioneer title upgrading, the two of them waited as Blair took apart the corpse of the titan.
“You take the arms, you take the legs, I’ll take the rest.” She says. She didn’t have enough room in her storage ring to carry it all by herself, and she certainly was not about to leave behind such precious materials.
“Do you have any plans for what to do moving forward?” Flynn asks during their trip back to the great city. “I’m sure with the population being so much lower there is going to be a lot less work for you.”
“I have thought about it.” The city’s leader admits. “My class is mostly focused around taking care of a city. While my subclass is focused on fighting, that is really only so I can defend the city if need be. I think I am going to continue as I am, and once my time in the tutorial ends I will assist in setting up a more permanent city back on Earth. What will you be doing?”
“I’m going to keep climbing the tower. I need to put in a lot of effort if I want to keep up with my current pace.” Flynn says. “Though, I am going to try and put in even more effort than I am already. After all, I do have somebody I need to be catching up to.”