I wasn't entirely sure what had happened outside of my tower, but in the past months, the amount of tattoo users had significantly grown, which was good. But unfortunately the new growth had quickly dwindled. From what I could tell, a couple weeks after I destroyed the camp, the campers had joined the nearby village. Most of the village's residents had even entered the first floor of my tower to get tattoos of their own. It seemed like the campers had understood my message.

With the village and the campers actively using the carbon spheres, my growth had increased significantly. But with no more new people receiving tattoos, my growth had peaked. Every day I vacuumed more mana from around me, instantaneously killed and remade various animals that happened to pass near my tower to take their mana, took the blood of many who entered the tower and had over two hundred people use their tattoos daily. But two hundred people weren't exactly many in the grand scheme of things. Even now, if I uncompressed my mana, I could expand my domain to maybe a sphere two kilometers in diameter at most.

I needed something new that I could use to find and reach more people. It was part of the reason I'd been teaching Oliver everything I knew of the world. Even though it would mean he wouldn't use my runes very often anymore, the mana he gave me wasn't very much anyway. I wouldn't miss what I got from one crow. But it did mean that Oliver would be more capable of helping me, and working as a research partner.

Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that Oliver would never be able to do things to such an intricate detail I could. Either he simply hadn't been in a small enough existence to truly understand the composition of atoms and molecules, the senses of his crow body drowned out whatever he could sense through his mana and understanding, or his mana or crow brain simply wasn't enough to process the information needed to move each atom individually.

Oliver might be able to eventually move a single atom, but he'd never be able to turn lead into gold, or move millions of atoms in different directions. When he saw a rock, he would always think of it as a rock instead of a bunch of molecules. Even so, what I taught him would definitely enable him to do more with his mana.

In just a week of active practice, Oliver learned to vibrate the air around him with his mana to speak. He managed to teach me to do the same, though my words weren't exactly understandable according to Oliver. I preferred writing anyways, since feeling air molecules shake was nothing like hearing the words. I was like a deaf person attempting to understand words from the vibrations of the ground, and trying to speak by shaking my fingers, but I knew I would eventually get used to it.

But learning to speak wasn't the only reason why I wanted to decipher waves, as there was a thing called light. I wanted to see outside of my domain, and understand what those in my tower could see. I could select a single point in space, and observe the directions and wavelengths of each photon passing through, effectively giving me a 360° field of view from that point. But it did have the same problem as my 'hearing'. I was a blind man seeing through someone telling him the RGB values of each pixel on a screen. But it was better than nothing, and with Oliver's help I could figure out what wavelengths of light were visible to a crow's eye. And with time, it hopefully would become instinctive to know the colors of various photons.

With a newly found form of vision, I focused on a point above my tower, and prepared to see all around me. The sky was… blue, with some white clumps. Directly under was a wide circle of black, my tower. Everywhere else, it was plain green. In my mind's eye, I tried to imagine what it would have looked like as a human as best as I could, hoping that if I did it enough I would be able to see as I had before I'd stopped being human. Because even though the information I had was maybe of the same clarity as a homemade pinhole camera, I could only put it together as vague shapes and general colors. I couldn't even figure out where the village was, which should be clearly visible according to Oliver.

I was all powerful, omniscient, but trapped in a tiny bubble compared to the grand scale of the world. Then again, compared to the universe, who wasn't? I needed more mana faster not to just give amazing powers to people, to make fantasy into reality, but because I wanted to see the world again. I would be able to experience everything on earth, understand each and every single molecule in existence, learn everything there was to learn, and truly be a benevolent God.

The only thing preventing me was the distance between me, and what I needed to grow at a faster rate. I would need to figure out how to get more mana from each person or… What if I could change the distance? What if I could compress space itself to shorten the distance from my tower, to settlements across the planet. What if I could make it so that anyone could get to my tower from anywhere, in mere minutes.

–

Word quickly spread, and soon enough the small City had gathered to see who their unexpected guests were, with Michelle and elder Brianna of Gressa ready to greet them.

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"Greetings, citizens of Valessa. What might be the purpose of your visit?" The elder spoke.

"Who are you supposed to be? Actually, never mind that. Where is Kerto, master Hand of the Helpers guild?", Was the immediate reply of the stranger.

"She is Brianna, elder of this city. And who might you be? And why are you searching for Kerto, he's not even here currently?" Michelle questioned tensely.

"An elder of what, 300 people? Anyways, I am Osomo, a chancellor of Valeria. It has come to my attention that after breaking a deal with our pantheon, Kerto has aided in the forming and building of a new city, in our land." The richly dressed man said.

Brianna tried to interject, saying that they rightfully formed the city, but Osomo interrupted her. "Shut it. Not only building new buildings against our wishes, but aiding a 'god' who has killed on multiple occasions now, in growing large enough to pose a serious risk, are both crimes against us."

Osomo took a deep breath, holding back his fury. "Having learned of this atrocity, we organized a vote. The City of Valessa, and our god Valeria do not recognize your town as a city. We have even sent messages to several other cities on this isle, and each has come to an agreement. A cult of about 300 people worshiping a spirit which has killed on multiple occasions, should not be allowed to have jurisdiction with its own laws and government. As such, we are here to inform Kerto of this development—apparently you too, Elder—, and give a week's time for him and his helpers to leave this town. In addition, anyone still associated with the 'god' Greto in a week's time, will be executed. Our clerics are prepared to heal any and all missing limbs in case you don't figure out any other methods to get rid of those tattoos of yours."

The crowd was silent for a long time, before erupting in outrage. Shouts of "You can't do this!" And "you want us to cut off our hands?" Echoed through the town. Many of the townspeople even prepared to strike with their runes, that is, until Osomo spoke again. Michelle recognized the language, it was the near harmonic language that was used to speak with Valeria. The language clerics used to ask their god to do their bidding, that each citizen of Valessa knew a few words of. But it shouldn't do anything outside of Valeria's domain, Michelle thought. The air hundreds of steps above them started to glow white hot, clearly saying the goddess could and had learned new tricks. It was a simple show of power, a clear proof that if necessary, Valeria could spread her domain outside the walls of Valessa.

"I assure you, I can do this. Every city on this isle agrees that you aren't independent from the authority of Valessa, and you are not free to do as you wish. You have a week before we purge you of the demon you worship. You're lucky to have even that much time." Osomo said.

And as Evelyn stared at her uncle with hatred in her eyes, Osomo spoke a few more words in the language of his god, before he, Thomas and their entourage disappeared into the ground.

–

Oliver had never imagined how intricate the world really was, everything Tim had told him of what matter was made of, what sound and light were, how the ownership of mana was transferred to different souls, to the intricacies of the mind. The only thing Tim kept secret was how the dust could give him mana, saying that he wasn't sure if Oliver having the know-how would make the dust obsolete to Oliver. Oliver didn't mind too much, he already had learned enough to do experiments of his own.

Over the months as Oliver had freely flown around, helping those who looked like they needed it, saving merchants from bandits and hunting various animals for the hungry, Oliver had come to appreciate his crow body. The absolute sense of freedom not only from flying, but how large being a crow made the world, the joy of being able to go nearly anywhere without worry, and the joy he got from seeing the expressions of people witnessing a crow blow their worries away, often literally.

It all made the world seem so much better than it had been as a human, but he did still miss being one. The feeling of something missing had lessened ever since Oliver had learned to talk. It had taken a while to learn the local language, but not as long as he had imagined. Even with the local writing being completely different, the spoken words had many similarities to Oliver's old language.

Unfortunately it still wasn't the same, which was rather clear from the expressions of fear and shock everyone Oliver talked to had. But he had an idea to fix his problems. Oliver still didn't want to die, or give all of his mana away so that Tim could modify his body. Oliver still believed there would be repercussions either from losing a majority of his mana, or having no brain attached to his soul. The occasional gaps in memory Tim had were evidence of that in Oliver's opinion. So instead of having Tim destroy his crow body to have it replaced with a human body, Oliver would get a second body for himself. But if it was possible, Oliver could be both crow and human at the same time.

When Oliver had shared the idea with Tim, Tim immediately became excited of creating a true hivemind. Oliver just had to agree to two terms, Tim would have free rein to create whatever kind of body he wanted for Oliver, so long as it was human. And after creating the human body, Oliver would be a test subject to see how many bodies he could reasonably handle. Oliver agreed, but only after Tim offered Oliver a floor on the tower to modify as he wished, where no visitors would enter without permission.

After discussing various ideas for both the body, and floor decoration, Oliver had to admit he was excited. More excited than he had been in a long time.