Kerto wasn't exactly happy, not only had a few peasants escaped from them, but they had seemingly climbed higher than any helper had so far. Kerto had trained for his entire life, each intricate way to use his mana to help with his daily life, to protect people from the dangers of the world. And now peasants were going to danger deliberately, becoming clerics with impossible powers just because they could climb up an impossibly high tower.
It was an utter embarrassment, for him and the guild he was a part of, and a horrible start for the deal they made with the city of Valessa. Keep the locals from hurting themselves and dying in the tower in order to prevent it from growing too quickly, and the city would give them free reign. They hadn't done their jobs, proved themselves incapable of doing so, Kerto had been bested by a girl half his age who had been protecting her friends after all, though she had been extremely lucky in his opinion.
Worse, the locals had been in the right, as clerics should have access to the spire according to all intercity laws. If a neighboring city heard of the helpers guild not allowing clerics to enter their god's domain, it'd cause more problems than staying at the tower was worth. The priests of Valessa would end their deal the moment they heard what had happened.
Kerto was left with a choice to make. On one hand, the spire was an amazing resource. Helpers with cleric powers would have the potential to take over all the cities of the world if they felt like it. And that's not to mention the ability to have all the luxuries the gods offered in their cities. Better and warmer housing, food storage, waste facilities, running water from somewhere other than a well with a few dead animals in them. But that might come at the cost of losing everything they had already established all through the greater Island. So either prevent word of the recent events spreading, and hide secrets from all their allies, or end the deal with Valeria themselves, and continue with their age old traditional godless mana usage, while allowing the city of Valessa to destroy the tower.
At least the clerics of the tower weren't Valeria's citizens, so apart from their rights as clerics which the guild should respect, they were unprotected by any law. And as such, the punishment and trial for the murder of a guild member was left to the helpers guild. And Kerto definitely found them guilty. Kerto made his choice. They would need a plan, and some training so the next conflict wouldn't lead to a second embarrassment. A week or two of intense training would have to be enough. If Kerto had to, he'd personally lead as many helpers to the fifth or maybe even sixth floor of the tower as he could.
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Evelyn landed in the center of the small village with a crash. Audrey went off flying with his leg almost completely torn off, and Michelle slid against the gravel for a good few steps. This was supposed to be a fun day, Evelyn thought with a laugh. They wouldn't be climbing the spire for a while. The next thing Evelyn knew was waking up in a small room, with a dryer mouth than she thought possible, her left hand in a splint, and each breath being a pain.
With a quick burst of mana, Evelyn directed a stream of water in her mouth. She sat up with a groan, before scrubbing her eyes and looking around the room. In the beds next to hers, there was Michelle and Audrey, the former of whom was already awake.
"What happened?" Michelle asked, "One moment I was fighting them, just after you were chained, and the next I woke up here, all bloody and bandaged."
Evelyn looked down in guilt, "I woke up on some plank, being levitated towards Valessa by the helpers. Then Valeria must've thrown us out of the city when the helpers stepped in there, and they realized we weren't Valeria's citizens… I managed to get us away on one of the boards. The landing was tough."
"That's… Thanks, you did well." Michelle said, before looking at Audrey's leg, "We couldn't have guessed this would happen." The leg was gone below the knee.
The day passed quietly as they lay in the bed, being taken care of by Maroth, the father of one of Michelle's students, the one who'd lost their arm. Eventually, Audrey woke up. He cried a bit for the loss of his leg, before he resolutely decided not to step foot in the tower anymore. Not that it mattered anymore with the helpers guild in the way.
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Eventually a young child ran into the room with a squeal "Teach! Hi Evelyn!" Michelle gave the child a small smile "Guess what!" He shouted, before pointing at his black right stump, and gaining a look of intense focus. Dozens of small pebbles burst out of the black dust, and formed the vague shape of an arm, only more tentacle-like.
"It's a pity we couldn't get him to Valessa to be healed, but the kid swears he's better off with the bigger tattoo." Maroth commented. "Makes me kinda jealous, cooking food would be so much easier with one of those."
"It'd be easy to get one for you, if I could've just been less of an idiot." Evelyn uttered.
"Still is. We have a bunch of dust vials, don't we. Why not make tattoos of our own?" Audrey murmured from his bed, while looking at the boy's arm. "A stone leg does seem like it'd be a nice thing to have."
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Oliver was lost, he'd felt lost much of the time ever since he'd been reborn as a crow. That in itself was weird, then there was the fact that he wasn't entirely sure if whatever being had given him his new body was merely an extremely powerful sorcerer, or a god. Either way, Oliver felt like his pet, trapped in a cage with the only logical option being that of doing what Tim asked him, which wasn't very much. And even that, though it was something Oliver could agree with, spreading an easy way for everyone to become sorcerers, the method used wasn't something Oliver found ideal. So Oliver had decided to stay with Tim, in hopes of becoming human again, seeing his family brought back to life, and changing Tim's methods of spreading sorcery to be more safe.
However, staying in an empty tower became boring extremely fast, he'd need to agree to some forms of entertainment in the tower with Tim. Oliver had already fought alongside a few of the climbing parties in the tower, and that too had become boring with only the same four floors. Soon enough Oliver was capable of defeating any of the enemies on the floors with ease, and so he had decided to leave the tower for a while. Perhaps he'd find something to do in the outside world. And besides, he absolutely loved flying, feeling the wind in his feathers and seeing sights unimaginable to a human brain. Oliver would miss some parts of his crow body when he'd finally be turned back into a human.
By the end of the day, Oliver had come across a few bandits attempting to rob various merchants, or so he hoped. Oliver's understanding of the local language wasn't anywhere near perfect, as there were only a few similar words in the languages, and even those he could only guess at.
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Half the camp outside of my tower was obliterated in mere seconds. For a good while now, I had been compressing the mana I had gained, and expanded it towards the center of earth. But for a few seconds, I expanded my domain over the campsite near the base of my tower. A bit over one hundred people, who, according to Oliver, prevented people from entering my tower. So I reduced the tents to dust, their equipment, food and so much more. To send more of a message, I felt the carbon spheres on those who were standing directly in front of the entrance, and through them, devoured them. I would be doing some experimentation with their consciousnesses, their souls, later.
A few of the people managed to resist my domain by using their own mana to push against mine. Thanks to them, the campsite likely still had some food reserves. So, to make having a monopoly over me harder, I decided to expand my tower. Like the roots of a tree, I expanded long tunnels from the base of my tower outwards, fifty entrances all over the nearby area in a hundred meters. It would probably be enough to discourage the campers.
With my retaliation finished in seconds, I decided to go back to what I was doing before. The creation of nonorganic life, and now I had a few test souls ready for experimentation, who probably wouldn't care about the morality of my upcoming actions. I decided to start by connecting one of the minds to a pile of pebbles. I wasn't sure how long it'd take for the former human to realize their new existence, so I decided to let them be. It was probably torture to it, but this was a person who was preventing me from growing, so it was justified. Though I was nice enough to form a dense mana cloud around it, and even tried to forcefully give it some, before I went off to create layouts for more floors.
A few days passed with the pebbles unmoving, but they did gather some mana from me, so I knew the soul was active. Then, eventually, as hours had flown by, the pebbles moved, controlled by the souls mana. I decided to try and whoop in joy by vibrating the air in my tower, before briefly wondering what it sounded to the humans.
Some time later, the conscious pebbles began to move around the tower. It expanded the pebbles to all the far reaches of each room, before moving towards its next destination one pebble at a time. Like the toes of a thousand legged spider moving around without a body. It was clearly blind, like I had suspected, but it moved, and was a working stone golem that didn't need me to be a puppet master. Maybe I could try and help it understand the world around it, or figure out how to give it better senses than just feeling where one of its pebbles collided with something, but it was absolutely a new, inorganic, wonderful form of conscious life. But that wasn't the point, the point was that I could create whatever kind of life I wanted. A true hivemind, a moving puddle of water or slime, golems, elementals, dragons, everything and anything. I was a god.