It had been a while since the three runes had started glowing, so when new runes started once again lighting up on the door the helpers were guarding, it took some time for them to notice. When they finally did notice the new bright symbols on the door, seven of them were already glowing. Upon seeing the eighth rune light up, the group started arguing with one another. Two of their group of five wanted to go in search of whomever was trying to open the door, and prevent them from lighting all the torches, while the rest wanted to stay in front of the door and wait.
When the ninth rune turned alight, the two who had argued against waiting decided to defy orders, and ran off in search of the mysterious torch lighters. However, their rebellious action did nothing against preventing the final three runes from starting to shine, causing the door to slowly slide open.
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When Evelyn and her friends had seen the five helpers guarding the door for the first time, they had decided to open the door before trying to talk their way past the helpers. The three torches the trio had stumbled across earlier had been placed seemingly randomly, which meant that Evelyn and her friends would have to search through the entire floor. While the floor was only about the size of a couple hundred steps in width and length, it was covered in dense, hard to traverse, vegetation. On the plus side, that had made it much easier to traverse through the floor without being seen by the helpers.
Soon after the ninth torch was lit, they heard some shouting from the direction of the closed door. When they went to sneak a peek at the helpers, two of the helpers were walking away from their group, coincidentally towards the exact opposite direction of where Evelyn, Michelle and Audrey were watching.
The last three torches took only a short time to set aflame, mostly due to how little of the floor had been left unexplored. Consequentially, the trio had found quite a few magic items, like an ax that bombarded everything its blade touched with lightning, which Audrey quickly became fond of. The number of dust vials they'd come across was nothing to scoff at either, though they weren't entirely sure if the helpers guild would even buy the stuff anymore.
Not long after the final torch was set alight, and a fight with a bat too large to fly anymore, the group arrived to the center of the floor once again, prepared to talk their way to the next floor. "Excuse me, but we're going to the next floor, so can you please let us through?" Evelyn asked the three helpers standing in front of the now open door.
"Do you have the authority of the chief hand to enter?" One of the helpers said.
"Who? ...Look, we're not members of the helpers guild, but we're-" Michelle started to explain, only to be interrupted. It seemed like she had said the wrong thing.
"Apprehend them!" One of the guards shouted, causing the other two to jump into action.
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I was pondering a dilemma, or maybe it was more of a question. Where did consciousness come from? I of course knew the answer to that, at least partly, or I thought I did. I understood what consciousness was well enough to move the individual conscious bits around, from one body to another. Consciousness was independent from anything physical, instead being simple yet incredibly complex bits of spontaneous information that could travel, read and give its information to what it considered to be a part of it.
A human consciousness would move around the brain, receiving whatever information the brain had received from the body and processed to something more legible for the mind to understand, so that the mind could then make choices on what the brain should tell the body next. When the mind had nothing it could call its own, then it would simply remain still, uncaring of the world around it until the moment it suddenly disappears.
The same was true for all the animals and plants, the cells of the animals and of all other types, and even some viruses. But I still had no idea where they disappeared to, or even where they came from. When a cell, insect, or pretty much anything was born, not created, a consciousness would just appear out of nowhere to inhabit it. I of course used it to my benefit, letting various plants and fungi grow, before killing them to make twice the amount of smaller plants and repeating the process. That way I had good supplies of living cells underneath the first floor of my tower which could be killed when I needed the cell minds to construct creatures.
If I could just figure out what in the birthing process caused the spontaneous creation of all sorts of intelligent minds, then the creation of my creatures would likely become so much easier. I wouldn't have to make something similar to a snake when using the mind of a snake, or reincarnate former humans to inhabit new species. I could use a mind that hadn't inhabited any body before, so they would be merely as confused as a newborn. And infants haven't learned anything that might affect their choices, so they only do what their instincts tell them to.
If I could essentially program those to a creature, then I could make literally as many creatures of all kinds of fantasy I wanted. A dragon that feels the need to sleep on gold or actually know how to use the damn fire rune in their mouth to breathe fire. Or a pegasus that wouldn't be absolutely clueless on what it should do with its wings to the point where it pretends they don't exist, and tries to continue the life of a deer... I had possibly become slightly annoyed with my constant failed attempts at making rune using, or otherwise magical animals, without resorting to using the few human consciousnessess I had access to.
I quickly calmed my mind, and focused on millions of cells undergoing mitosis at that very moment. I watched as they stretched and then split, and how at the moment of division, a new consciousness popped into existence before it started to rapidly move around the cell, doing whatever the mind of a fungi does.
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Finally, after noticing the a mutated offspring of a cell, I came up with an idea. Something that had been done to a small extent on earth, but what I could take to the next level thanks to me being what I was. I could genetically engineer clones, change their genetic makeup to such an extent that the creatures born by natural means would be radically different from their parents. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it'd work for most creatures I could imagine myself wanting on the upper floors.
Or better yet, I could make a consciousness factory, a lab where I'd grow brains by naturalish means, so that when a intelligent consciousnessess pops into existence, I could immediately destroy the brain and move the mind into a different body. That way, what I'd create wouldn't necessarily have to be organic in nature. I could make intelligent weapons, golems and tools, without having to worry about the mental health of a human turned into an inanimate object. That is, if my idea works.
But before I started working on the new project, my attention flickered to something odd happening on the third floor. Testy and their team were in a fight with other humans, who seemed to be trying to prevent them from entering the elevator to the fourth floor. Now that wouldn't do, not at all. My tower was created so that those who proved themselves would get higher. And this... Let's just say that I decided to give them a little surprise.
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Evelyn reacted a moment too late. The helpers had already managed to painfully ensnare her hands behind her back with a chain and some very precise mana manipulation, before she could even form a rune. But even with her hands tied behind her back, Evelyn wasn't helpless.
She couldn't unravel the chain, since it was still held tight with mana, and her captor was more skilled in mana manipulation than Evelyn was. Instead, Evelyn needed to distract the helper, get their attention away from controlling the chain, which would enable her to remove it, and then she would be able to blast the damned chain to the other side of the floor.
As Michelle defended herself with her own skilled mana manipulation, fighting over the control of one chain, and Audrey blasted the chain directed at him, back at the person who attacked him in a remarkably familiar way, Evelyn formed a fire rune. She let masses of her mana flow through the tattoo, and pushed a wall of fire towards her enemy.
The helper doged to the side, but his clothes still managed to catch on fire, and quite understandably, he started to panic. The chain loosened around Evelyns arms, and she quickly shook them off before blasting it right at the chain Michelle and her opponent were fighting over. Both chains flew far away, somewhere into the forest.
The helpers had only one chain left, which meant tying all three of the friends would be difficult. This was hopefully a non fatal combat, so Evelyn hoped they'd have the advantage now with the helpers having a harder time in tying them down.
Michelle, who was no longer fighting over a chain, decided to use the less traditional method of using runes, and conjured blasts of water that she shot towards all three helpers. they managed to block a few of the small orbs of water, drowning out the flames that Evelyn had lighted, and then knocking the no longer burning man off their feet with a particularly vicious hit to the face.
One down, two to go, Evelyn thought, before she felt like she was missing something. That feeling was answered when two chains came flying from behind them, tightly wrapping Audrey's and Michelle's arms around their bodies. When Evelyn turned around to see what happened, the woman who'd previously been fighting against Audrey, sent her chain to ensnare Evelyn.
It was the two guild members who hadn't stayed to guard the door. Evelyn had forgotten about them in the adrenaline of the fight, and it seemed she wasn't the only one who had. The results weren't good. Audrey was on the ground, his arms bent uncomfortably beneath him, so he couldn't do much without hurting himself, and Evelyn was in much the same situation. Only Michelle had remained standing, but her tattooed palm was pointed towards her, so none of them could do anything with runes. Even pure mana manipulation was out of question, since they were surrounded by four still conscious members of the helpers guild, each with as good or better mana manipulation as Michelle.
"Nice to see you two show up. Alright, I'll carry Gregory, the rest of you take these criminals. And make sure their palms are pointed at them, so they can't surprise any of us with their tattoos again." One of the helpers said, receiving a "yes sir," in reply from the others.
It seemed like their climb had come to an end. They would be taken to the helpers guild, where Evelyn was sure they could explain the situation and get some kind of permit to climb the tower later, it was within their legal right after all, and they wouldn't even be leaving empty handed. But Evelyn couldn't do anything against the feeling of disappointment. She was sure Audrey and Michelle were feeling much the same way. They'd gotten so far, only to be stopped by someone not a part of the gods challenges. Just as those thoughts crossed her mind, she heard a deep rumbling echoing from all directions.
Everyone stopped moving, as everything in sight seemed to warp. Bending in impossible directions, elongating and morphing into lines. Her sight shattered, everything split into pieces as if the world were a shattered mirror, and yet, Evelyn felt completely fine, except for the mild dizziness she had started to feel. A single brightly glowing orb, left untouched by the shatters in reality, descended through the solid roof, and as it opened, revealing a shadow of a figure inside it, Michelle realized something. The members of the helpers guild weren't breathing, and clearly weren't able to move. It was as if they were under the wrath of a god, a feeling slightly too familiar to Evelyn.
"Run, They can't follow us!" Evelyn shouted the moment she realized, before she started running back towards the hopefully still open door, with her friends in tow. They did stumble a few times before the weird effect on their sight faded away. Looking back, they could see five unconscious forms lying on the ground.
Evelyn stumbled through the door after Audrey, shortly before Michelle stepped in panting. The run had been brief, mostly thanks to them not encountering any creatures on their way, and the three friends were finally able to enter through the door, into a small circular room. As the door closed behind them, Evelyn felt a moment of panic before she felt the entire room shift upward. A few brief moments of gathering her breath, Evelyn sat down on the floor, and hoped that she'd have time to eat lunch before entering any combat on the next floor. Though it didn't make her any less excited to see what new runes and adventures laid in wait above them.