“It comes down to time and efficiency,” Kene said as they pushed their broom forwards. “We have three weeks left. How long did Liz say it usually takes to clean out each level?”

“The first floor usually takes about a day, but the second floor is usually around a week,” I said. “The third floor can take two, maybe three? It really depends on what you get.”

“Then it sounds like we need to use it on the second floor,” Kene said, and I nodded my agreement.

Dusk commented that we should use it on any social or clearly time consuming challenges – if we were dropped into a scenario where we had a week to prepare for an incoming battle, that would be a massive time save.

“Absolutely,” Kene agreed. “I do wonder, though… If the trials hidden around are meant to match the ones in the tower, could we get growth items by finding the next trial site?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I doubt it. This didn’t give us elixir. I think we might get another tool to help pass third floor challenges, or even an item to empower the growth item we get, but I think it’s more worth looking after if we pass the third floor. But we don’t know where one is, and it took us almost a week to find one last time.”

Kene nodded his agreement as we swooped down to land in front of the tower.

Even if I was beginning to get a very unsavory view of the Sevenfold Celestial Sage, I couldn’t help but admit that the tower was impressive up close.

Eight stories tall, it soared into the air with a graceful elegance I’d rarely seen in normal skyscrapers. Each story was made of a different colored stone, and caved with elaborate shapes of spell formulae. But it wasn’t just arrays, which would have been impressive enough.

Each of the spells carved into the tower had been placed and selected in such a way as to resemble the story of the sage’s life, crawling up from humble beginnings to great power.

I was a bit doubtful of the interpretations. While the spell-pictures on the first floor depicted him being born in a tiny hovel, they were also quite proud about how his father had been a dean of the now-defunct Selwit University, and how he’d been outperforming collegiate mages by age sixteen.

It felt a bit like the pictures were trying to have it both ways, claiming he had the best of the best while also being poor and humble.

The spell-pictures wrapped around the entire base, save for one part: the entry gate. Made of some kind of polished, preserved wood that I couldn’t recognize, they were carved with more scenes, this time of people fawning over the sage’s power.

There were clusters of tents and teams camped all around the entrance, and occasionally, one would get up and push open the gates, then vanish under a spatial warp.

Kene and I landed, then looked around for a little bit. There was a Delitone representative who was ensuring that all of this land was considered neutral territory, and that nobody broke out into a fight, but most people seemed too tired to even think about fighting.

“Each time you lose or ‘die’, you’re kicked out,” one of the teams groused to me at a water barrel. “There’s a four hour cooldown until you can head back in! That’s not enough time to leave and gather stuff, but too much time to stay here. So we mostly just rest.”

I nodded and thanked the team for the information, while Kene asked around about what sort of challenges the tower.

Half an hour later, once we were confident that we’d gathered as much relevant information as we could, we passed through the gates ourselves.

There was a flicker of spatial magic, and we appeared in front of a massive stone monster. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was a construct or if it was an illusion, since apparently the tower’s magic would pull us out if we died, but either way, it gave off waves of power that I didn’t like. Peak third gate, with dense and potent power that would have given the estragon a run for its money, and worse, a much tougher form.

Still, it wasn’t as bad as I feared. Then again, this was the first room of the first floor.

There was a flicker as the apparition of the sage appeared.

“Welcome, challengers!” he said, spreading his arms wide. “I can sense that you have already completed some of my hidden trials, and as such, I won’t waste your time explaining. Indeed, you may find this challenge rather easy. But it is needed.”

There was a flicker as the recording changed slightly.

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“A valuable skill for any mage is the ability to punch over their weight class,” the sage said. “This trial will test your ability to do that.”

Then the sage vanished, and we dove into combat. Kene’s aura flared up around them, and they slapped my shoulder. Golden light and fiery runes bloomed over Dusk and me, even as we prepared my own spells and exploded forward into battle.

The earth monster lumbered forwards, swinging a massive fist at Kene, but their aura fused with Siobhan’s, and blew the giant backwards. I teleported into the air over it and released a maelstrom of flaming bones and briars. None of them were strong enough to truly punch through the stone, but I hadn’t overcharged any of them, so I hadn’t exactly expected them to either.

But it was enough to create a clear distraction. Dusk leapt out of my pocket and slipped between the stone giant’s legs, and even as it swung at me, I teleported back.

It clapped, and a spray of stones materialized, forged from telluric mana, and ripped out towards us. Kene and Siobhan tanked it easily enough, then they stepped forwards in unison. Bluelight Fangs forged in the air and snapped over the giant’s form, then shook it like a ragdoll.

I raised an eyebrow, even as I teleported out of the way of the giant and unleashed another wave of bones and briars at the giant’s back. The giant staggered, thrown off by the combination attack, and Dusk unleashed her own attack.

A thin lance of shifting, spinning sand and air stabbed through the giant’s chest, and it exploded as the power eroded away at the stone composing it.

This was one of the third gate spells that the library had given her, called Sandstorm Lance. While her mana did have a bit too much of a skew towards life to use the spell at its maximum power, it still had plenty of telluric, tempest, physical, death, and desolation mana.

And against armored opponents, a thin, drilling spell like this was absolutely perfect. She hadn’t had the time to use it against the drakes, since it was a completely new spell, still in the sketching stage, and hadn’t even memorized it yet.

But the giant wasn’t dead yet, which meant it was time for me to earn my keep. I teleported in close and slapped my hand against the hole that Dusk had punched in the stone armor, then summoned Blademoss. I didn’t focus on its magical side, not yet.

Instead, I just let the moss grow rampant over the cracks and holes in the giant’s body. It swung at me, but my aura pin gave me enough time to teleport backwards out of the way.

Then I clapped my hands and sent power surging into the magical parts of Blademoss’ arrays. Dusk joined her power into mine, easing some of the burden, and providing a denser mana for it to feed on.

And the giant exploded.

The illusion of the sage appeared, congratulating us, but I ignored him. Kene cast a quick solar spell over me to soothe my spirit, then we walked into the next challenge.

In front of us stood a large, complex puzzle, with seven rings that had to be rotated around into the right pattern, but each time you shifted one, the other seven would shift. Above them was a painted sigil of seven rings, which I assumed to be the correct pattern.

“The power of senses is something that too many discount!” the illusion of the sage said. “Once you reach into the tiers of true power, someone without some sort of sensory or mental enhancement will find themselves lagging behind. This is a test of your mana senses. Each ring will respond to your senses, moving where you push them. You must interlock them in the same symbol as my own personal crest! Perhaps if you do well enough, it will be your personal crest as well…”

I was already moving my mana senses. I was pretty good at puzzles – they kept my brain and hands occupied at the same time, which was nice.

It took me a while to figure out the pattern that the seven were using, but Kene helped by noting down on paper how each movement shifted things.

It seemed like there were multiple permutations that needed to be completed before I could get it into the right shape – first altering around the red ring, then the brown one. After that, I needed to shift the green ring four times, the blue one, then the white one nine times. Finally, I could do two purple, and one black.

Technically speaking, the challenge was quite hard. It took a lot of time, for one – getting the permutations took Kene and I the better part of an hour. On top of that, the rings required a powerful push of the senses in order to even move, more than most mages had.

Both Dusk and Kene could barely shift a single ring, and when they did, it left their mana senses tired, like a muscle that had been pushed too far. They could have completed it even without me, but it would have taken a few hours longer, at least.

If I’d had the same level of mana senses as when I’d first started as a mage, then I wouldn’t have been able to finish it in under a day.

Now though?

Shifting the rings took little effort. In fact, it was actually kind of fun. They provided just enough resistance that I wasn’t able to push it around effortlessly.

I was almost disappointed when it slotted into place, and the door swung open.

“Congratulations!” the sage boomed as we stepped into the next room. It was a massive pool of lava, glowing with bright red solar and dark brown telluric energy, and the heat blasted us from all the way over here.

There was a door on the other side of the room, but it was over close to two hundred feet of lava.

In the air, starting about four feet off the ground, there were spinning knives, making flying across the room a rather dangerous prospect.

“You must pass over the lava!” the sage declared.

I considered Foxstepping over it, Dusk cheerfully whistled that this would be good for the eggs.

Her power swept out over the river of molten rock, and a moment later, I felt the energy draining from it. The energetic core that produced the magma was sucked into Dusk’s realm, and moments later, the lava began to cool.

We waited a little while for it to cool, then got onto our hands and knees and crawled under the knives and to the door on the other side of the room, before pushing through.

There was another flicker of spatial magic as I was suddenly separated from Kene, Siobhan, and Dusk, and I appeared in front of a familiar looking altar, with a statue of the sage in front of it.

The illusion appeared, and started congratulating me, but I was already tapping into Dusk’s realm to pull out the sacrifices.