The broom was nice, or so Audrey at least thought so, as it used six runes joined together with lines, in a similar way to the two symbols on the door, to create a vortex of air to help swipe dust. It wasn't very useful for any of them, since with Michelle's training even Evelyn was handling her cleaning with mana. Instead, the way the runes were joined together was... Insightful.
So far, every item they'd found in the tower were simple, doing only stuff they could already do with their tattoos alone, which was why they had largely thrown them into bags to be forgotten until they found someone who could make use of them. This broom however, it created a vortex of air when it collided with the ground, not a simple blast whenever mana was channeled into it.
Upon a closer look with Michelle sensing how the mana moved around the runes, they determined that when mana was pushed into the same circular rune that had been in every single item so far, it got stored in a second rune. From the second rune, the mana attempted to flow into a third rune, which only let the mana pass if the broom was sliding against something. From there, the mana would then flow to three runes, closely joined together in a triangle, which then would cause the air vortex around the broom.
Some of the runes were ones that they'd come across previously, and hadn't figured out what they did. Now, the answer was clear. All runes didn't have direct effect, as some would modify the current ones. Audrey almost started playing around with the black dust on the floor, to figure out what every single rune did. Maybe he could make a jacket that instantly created a shield the moment something struck it, instead of having to rely on his reflexes. Or he could- Audrey noticed the two connected runes on the door didn't follow his idea of having describing runes for the various effects. Instead, the two connected runes on the door were the symbols for air and stone.
Audrey became instantly curious, how could stone be described to become more airlike, or vice versa. What would those two runes create? Would it just create a stone and shoot it away, like what happened of the runes weren't connected together, or would it do something different.
Deciding to give it a try, Audrey pointed away from the others, and formed the two runes with his mana, before pushing it through his tattoo. A clump of sand fell on the floor, and Audrey's brain nearly exploded with ideas. The runes weren't just one rune for one specific thing. They were more of a language than Audrey had thought. What would happen if he connected the water and fire runes, would it instantly create steam instead of slowly heating the water to a boil. Or what about combining the coldness and fire runes, those seemed to almost cancel each other out, and when used separately, would just cause the fire to die. But if they were connected, making a new rune, would it be different?
"Audrey, you ready to face the next door?" Michelle said from where she had been copying the new rune and trying it out. Audrey nodded affirmative, feeling only a slight pang of pain at the action.
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Gregory remembered having fought against some non guild members, being on fire, and then something cold splashing hard at his head. Then he'd woken up somewhere else... Still in the tower, wet and confused. Why had there been civilians in the tower anyway? It should be a restricted zone. Except that probably was the reason they were fighting... So that they could take the civilians to safety. It seemed reasonable, though Gregory couldn't remember.
Something moved to Gregory's left. A rock, probably. How could a rock move? Then the rock sat up, and Gregory recognized it as his dirt covered friend wrapping something around his wrist. What was his name again? "Hey... Friend! ...what happened?" Gregory slurred, talking was difficult.
Gregory's friends head snapped to look at him, with a expression of relief, "Greg, thank the spirits you're awake. We made a mistake, the god's not happy with us, we need to leave, now." It's funny how a face can suddenly become so pale, though Gregory wasn't entirely sure if it was because everything seemed abnormally bright and blurry.
"Greg... Are you alright?" Friend asked. Of course he was, other than the slight pressure building behind his eyes, Greg felt fine, and pressure wasn't pain, so all was good.
Gregory tried to untie his tongue to answer, but a fallen tree stump interrupted him. "Bloody civilians, what'd they do to mess us up this badly?" The tree stump said, before standing up and revealing to be a man. Though Gregory didn't imagine it was any weirder than a rock turning into his friend. A few seconds later, two more people rose from the ground. All of them seemed familiar to Gregory though he couldn't quite place his finger on why.
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"Attacked us when we tried to apprehend them, the rest was likely done by the tower itself." One of the familiar people groaned, though Gregory's friend didn't seem to care.
"Greg needs immediate medical attention! Come help," friend shouted to the others, and suddenly everyone was next to Gregory, poking at him and shouting questions from all directions, though none of them seemed to understand his answers. Gregory briefly wondered why a shiny rope suddenly vanished to thin air though his red tinted vision faded to black before he could form the words. It was a pity, none of the others seemed to notice the rope disappearing. In what felt like an instance of sleep, and yet a lifetime of dreams about his family and friends, everything faded away, leaving only true chaos behind.
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They finally figured it out, that it was possible to combine runes with lines to get different effects than using the two runes simultaneously. I could imagine a future with all sorts of people using various magical artefacts in their daily lives. I would be growing much faster as soon as word got out, and I couldn't wait. Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do to speed up word of my tower existing.
I could probably figure something out if I spent some time thinking about it, but for now I should have Oliver check out the nearby area. And figure out the secret of tying souls to inanimate objects, along with making new floors, runes, discovering the secrets of the universe and whatnot. I had a lot of stuff in my to-do list.
While trying to convince Oliver to have a look around, I felt someone slowly dying. One member of the group that had tried to prevent Testy's group from getting higher, had a blood pooling in their skull, as their consciousness was gradually moving slower, and in a smaller section of the brain. The body stopped breathing soon after the consciousness was inhabiting only a handful of neurons. Then the heart stopped beating, and the consciousness stopped moving with the corpse.
It was a fresh human mind, a perfect test subject. And it should know the local language, so that was a boon. I just needed to come up with a body to give the mind. Unfortunately, I'd just managed to goad Oliver to go out, so I couldn't ask him what was acceptable. Something humanoid should suffice, right?
Best ideas I could come up with were fairies, and the more I thought about it the more funny I imagined it. I could picture a tiny fairy flying on Oliver's back. But, while it would be a good laugh, I don't imagine Oliver or whoever the currently dead person was, would enjoy it. I could always make a fairy sometime later.
Instead of playing around, I could give the consciousness a properly useful body. Something that could be used to communicate with people entering the tower, but one that wouldn't just run away to continue their life. Maybe something like a gargoyle. It could be an amazing opponent on one floor, one that wouldn't just be a formidable mana using opponent in combat, but one that could be reasoned with. I just needed to decide if I wanted to give it a mostly human body with tiny stone scales covering it's body, or try to figure out if I can somehow make a consciousness inhabit literal stone.
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The door with the dual rune was locked when Evelyn tried to push it open. With a bit of speculation, they reasoned they should probably face whatever was behind the single rune doors first. After all, one of the five pedestals was filled with air currents after they defeated the air golem, so they determined something probably would happen if they filled all of the five pedestals by defeating the rest of the five corresponding obstacles.
Michelle opened the door with the fire symbol first, almost getting her eyebrows singed off as a reward. But Evelyn managed to form a shield of water before any skin was burned. After that, they spewed water and snow at the fire golem, and it quickly extinguished.
The remaining doors went in much a similar fashion. They opened the door, protected themselves from whatever golem was hidden behind the door with thick walls of different elements, and then attacked with everything they could imagine.
A golem made purely with sparkling lightning was defeated when they shot large rocks at it, through which the lightning dispersed to the ground with a bang. A floating orb of water was defeated when a blast of lightning instantly evaporated it's center, exploding the ball of water with a mass of steam. And finally, a golem made from a brittle stone was defeated with a constant stream of wind eroding it away.
They wrote down the runes behind each door, grabbed the mana items in bags, and prepared to try and open the same door as they had previously. Evelyn created a shield of water, and froze it to ice, while Audrey prepared to blast anything that came at them back at the golem and Michelle opened the door.
Behind it was a floating clump of sand, which quickly made it clear that disturbing it was a mistake. A stream of sand shredded right through the thick shield of ice Evelyn had made. Before anyone could even react, the sand narrowly missed Evelyn, only to bite through Audrey's shin, carving through skin and bone in an instant.