Evelyn let out a loud groan as she reached the second floor of the tower. She was in another labyrinth, with no visual differences to the first labyrinth. The god, whatever their name might be, didn't have a single bit of imagination.
Once all three members of their small group reached the second floor, they started traversing the second floor. It took only a few minutes for them to come across something unexpected. It was a floating stone torso, with two more floating stone spheres on either side. Luckily for the group, it was moving down the corridor, away from them. That is, until it turned around and stopped moving as it prepared to attack.
One of the two spheres came bashing towards the middle of the group, directly at Michelle, who just barely managed to dodge to the side. Unfortunately, the sphere turned around and struck her back before it returned to the stone torso's side.
"What bloody creation of the Tyrant is that thing!?" Evelyn managed to blurt out, before the second sphere came hurtling towards her. Michelle had been lucky since the sphere wasn't going full speed when it struck her, but even so she was groaning in pain on the ground. Evelyn knew she wouldn't be so lucky, as she realized she wasn't fast enough to fully dodge the sphere, and it was probably going fast enough to break bones. Instead of even trying to dodge, Evelyn brought her hand up, pointing the tattoo towards the rapidly nearing sphere, and pushed as much of her mana as she could through her tattoo.
The immensely fast airblast aimed at the sphere, slowed it down enough that it didn't shatter Evelyn's bones, but it still hurt like getting kicked by a horse. However, the moment the sphere came in contact with Evelyn's hand, and the tattoo she was still pushing her mana through, the sphere blasted off to the distance, shattering to pieces as it struck the wall.
"Great thinking!" Audrey shouted to Evelyn, before the other sphere came rushing towards his head. Unlike Evelyn, Audrey didn't plan to just soften the blow, he planned to strike back at the stone... thing. The sphere bashed into Audrey's hand with a crunch, and an instant later, it went flying directly towards the floating stone torso. With a bang, both the sphere and the torso disintegrated to dust.
"Gods, that hurts. How are you fine after that?" Audrey asked Evelyn before making sure his arm wasn't broken and that his wife, who still lay on the ground in pain, didn't have any serious injuries.
"I slowed the sphere down with air. Didn't you try the same thing?"
"No... I just went for the attack." Audrey answered with a pained groan, before asking for help with Michelle. Together, Evelyn and Audrey helped Michelle to her feet. Her back had twisted and bruised badly, but luckily Michelle hadn't broken any bones, and could still move her feet.
"So what was that?" Evelyn asked, not having recieved any answers the previous time she asked the question.
"That was a golem. A simple construction that a spirit uses to do the few things they can't do with their mana, like attacking and killing life." Michelle answered. "Usually a spirit enforces them with their mana to make them virtually indestructible. Our god though, they seem to like testing us."
"You mean the god could easily have killed us if it had wanted to?"
"Yup, a golem can usually only be stopped by grasping all the mana away from around them. And there are very few people in the entire city who even understand what mana is, well enough to be able to move another beings mana with their own. This golem however, it had some white heart shaped crystal in its torso. I suspect that when that is destroyed, the god discards the golem."
"What heart?" Both Audrey and Evelyn asked in surprise. Neither of them had noticed anything like that in the panic of sudden combat.
In response, Michelle searched the remains of the golem, finding multiple small white shards that looked suspiciously like salt. She licked it. "It's salt."
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While salt wasn't exactly expensive, it still was a luxury Evelyn had had only a handful of times in her life. If she had enough of it, she might be able to make a bit of money. If she was lucky, Evelyn might even afford food with daily trips to the tower. Life wouldn't be as easy as it was under Valeria, but Evelyn now had hope.
The group spent a minute gathering the shards of salt, before they continued exploring the labyrinth. They jumped over the few familiar pitfalls and trap doors, marked their path and dead ends with blades of grass, and fought against two more golems, with more ease each time, before they came across anything new.
In one dead end, there was a small pedestal, with a metal flask resting on top of it. Behind the two, there was a carved symbol on the wall, with some of the same writing that was over the tower entrance, underneath it. Inside the flask there was a powder so fine that it was almost a liquid, and so black that Evelyn could barely make out any surface details. It was almost like staring in a void, just like the black tattoo in her right palm. Now this, this she could sell, and she knew just the right customers.
Wanting to make sure her hopes weren't for naught, Evelyn pushed some of her mana through the powder... Only for seemingly nothing to happen. "Michelle, can you check if this powder works the same way as our tattoos" she said before handing the flask to Michelle.
Briefly pushing a bit of her mana through the flask, "I can feel my mana go out of my control, and become the god's, so yes. But the god doesn't do anything with it." Michelle answered.
"Give it to me, I want to try something." Audrey said. Michelle handed the flask to Audrey, who proceeded to pour some of the powder on his left hand. "There's probably a reason why the powder and that symbol are both here... So I'm pretty sure this should work." He said, as using the powder, he drew the symbol from the wall on his hand. Three straight lines, each crossing the other two at a single point. Almost like a snowflake.
Having drawn the symbol on his left palm, Audrey pushed his mana through it evenly. The Air around his hand cooled down rapidly, visibly turning into fog that flowed gently down from Audrey's palm to the floor beneath him. After just a few seconds, the cold became too much for Audrey to bear, so he stopped pushing mana through the powder, before carefully pouring it back in the flask.
"I was right!" Michelle shouted. "I said the tattoos would be able to do so much more than just push stuff."
"So, freeze stuff, and then push it away? And that's also not the tattoo, it's powder."
"Yes, but there probably are way more symbols around this tower. Who knows how many symbols just this floor has, let alone how many floors there are in this tower. And the powder works just like the tattoo. The tattoos are probably made from the powder. That means it's the shape of the mana that tells the god what we're asking them to do with it. So, in theory, if you shape your mana to the specific symbol before pushing it through the tattoo then, maybe we can get the tattoos to work like the powder symbol." Having explained her thoughts, Michelle concentrated more than she had ever before.
All her life, like most people, Michelle had learned more about controlling vast amounts of mana to move ever larger things with it. She wasn't a thief, nor was she ever planning to go in the business of spirit killing, so she hadn't bothered with learning the fine control needed to pick locks or other such things. Now, her knowledge and experience with mana manipulation went against what she was attempting to do. It took almost a minute, but eventually Michelle succeeded. With her mana she formed the same symbol that was on the wall, but elongated so that she could continuously push it through the tattoo, instead of just a brief moment. When it was formed, she slowly pushed the mana construct through the tattoo, and it worked. The air around her hand started to cool down. Seeing this, Evelyn realized her plans of riches had just become much more plausible.
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I had been watching the group of three with both interest and concern. If they continued at this rate, I would need to build the third floor very soon. But they had found my ice rune and the carbon spheres infront of it, and they figured out what it did. Then one of the three did something I hadn't expected, or even realized was a possibility. They shaped their magic in the shape of the ice rune, before giving it to me through the tattoo. It was a brilliant idea, such a simple way for people to use their magic for different effects on the fly, without preparing beforehand.
Of course the pre shaping method could only be used for the simplest rune combinations, since I doubted a human could shape their magic to combinations of dozens of runes accurately, but it still was infinitely useful. These people wouldn't even need my ice shield, they could do the same thing with their bare hands.
I could only dream about potentially millions of people happily giving their mana to me in order to throw fireballs around. I just couldn't wait to see how my runes might spread around the globe, or how the group would handle the flamethrower traps. They had been lucky to come across the ice rune before any of them. But if I wanted the future to be truly spectacular, I should expand my tower with a third floor and new runes in it.