Evelyn had been packing for a longer trip in the tower, when she heard the clank of Stone hitting the ground, before a knock echoed through her house. It was Audrey, patiently waiting for Evelyn to open the door. Audrey glimpsed at the haphazardly gathered items before saying anything. "You planning on going alone?"

"Yup," she simply responded.

"Why?"

"I'm going to spend my days with what gave me meaning, and if I'm lucky, they won't be my last."

"You know that's not what I meant."

Evelyn sighed, "I have no right to give people hope, so that they too could risk their lives. Siding with a god who's probably under a decade old, against a centuries old goddess? Sure, there's a real chance we could survive, it's hard to say how the domains of two spirits interact. And if we do, we could make our city into a real city, one with more trade and resources than maybe any city to have ever existed, except maybe for the ancients. But it's better, easier, that everyone cuts the tattoos off."

"I'm coming with you," Audrey said resolutely, "And Michelle too if she wants to."

"Why?"

"Same reason as you. If we want a chance, some of us will have to keep the tattoos. Everyone else can get new ones if we succeed. And if we fail, they'll be alive. But I don't want to leave you alone with this."

"But… your leg."

"Oh, come off it. I'm better off with these stones than with meat, and you know it." Audrey joked.

"Alright, fine," Evelyn agreed. "But we'll make sure Michelle knows first."

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It had taken only a bit over a day for Oliver to be familiar enough with two bodies to land on his own shoulder. Having two bodies wasn't as bad as Oliver had feared, once he became used to it. It was still weird, but in an oddly pleasant way. Nevertheless, Tim had made plans on a third and maybe a fourth body for Oliver.

Both the human and crow bodies were completely separate, it was just that Oliver experienced both. His vision from both bodies was completely separate, the feelings, senses and everything but thoughts came in two. One body could be tired, go to sleep and dream, while the other was wide awake, bursting with energy. One body could be happy while the other was angry. And Oliver experienced both. He could be enjoying a nice relaxing meal in the sunset, all the while panicking his way from a cat trying to eat him. And thoughts like those made it clear that language wasn't meant for whatever he was now.

Either way, the moment Oliver had felt confident enough, and once he'd designed his home with Tim, and filled it with comfort, Oliver, without his crow self, made his way to the nearby village. It wasn't a place he'd visited very often. Usually when he traveled around as a crow, he'd gone at least a dozen miles away, where he wouldn't be connected with the monsters in the tower, or the tower itself. A random farmer being saved from bandits by a magic crow was abnormal, but a villager from nearby the tower or someone who'd visited the tower, might react very differently.

But now Oliver was a human, or half human, or half of Oliver was a human… and he could be normal. It wasn't weird for a human to talk, nor was it weird for a human to use mana or Tim's tattoos.

The walk to the village wasn't very long, as it was visible the moment Oliver stepped foot outside the tower, but to Oliver, each step felt more significant than anything he'd experienced after his death. Oliver was alive, and human.

With a deep breath, Oliver made it to the village. It felt… significant. Oliver couldn't put his feelings into words, he had been killed by a sorcerer a long time ago, and after that he'd lived with a second sorcerer as a crow, and now it felt like he was finally back. Oliver watched in horror, as behind one of the small buildings, both adults and children were lined up to get their hands mutilated. As Oliver watched in quiet shock, a leather belt was stuffed in a young man's mouth. The teenager inhaled deeply, and nodded to a much older woman, who took a knife and prepared to stab the boy.

Oliver stopped the knife with his mana before it could cut even a scratch. "What is this madness?" Oliver shouted as he walked his way to the woman.

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"I could ask you the same thing, you know damn well we can't afford to go against the goddesses' will," the woman responded.

"Goddess?…" What kind of backwards village was the place? "Let the kid go."

"If he wants to. Do you want to keep your tattoo?" The young man shook his head. "There you have it. Now you let go of my hand."

Oliver stared for a moment, at the woman, the teenager and the teenagers palm, where one of Tim's black circular tattoos lay. "No. Why wouldn't you want to keep that tattoo?"

"Because it's ugly!" the woman sarcastically quipped. Then she noticed Oliver's look of genuine puzzlement, "What rock have you been living under, boy. We're taking the tattoos off, or else the goddess will kill us."

"Why would a 'goddess' bother to kill you because of a tattoo?"

"How should I know, I'm not a priest! Now, let us be!"

Oliver quickly became concerned, if people were getting rid of their tattoos, Tim might want to know about it. But Oliver didn't want someone to scrape the palm off a kid, so he decided to try and send a message. "Can you wait a moment," he said to the woman and teenager, before he took a stick and wrote. 'Hey Tim, people are cutting off their tattoos because they're afraid of some goddess.' before he pushed a sizable chunk of mana through his tattoos at the message, which was blown away with the gravel it was written on in a mere moment. Oliver knew the mana would become Tim's, and that he'd be able to read the message with it. Having sent the message, Oliver decided to wait for a response.

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With the advent of hiveminds, and my efforts into figuring out exactly what space is, so that I could make wormholes, I knew it was time to refashion some bits of my tower. There were a few major parts of my tower that I wanted to improve upon, before making myself global.

The first issue I had was the lack of variety. A person would enter my tower, and learn the layout of it, which caused the individual person to use less time and mana in my tower. Not to mention it must be dreadfully boring to go through the same route every single visit. It of course had the advantage of people being able to reach the higher floors quicker, but I was pretty sure I'd be getting significantly more mana if people didn't know what was ahead. It was made significantly worse with how crowded those routes became, with many people following one person who killed all the creatures and faced the traps, as everyone else would skin the creatures, pick whatever was edible from the plants and search for carbon dust and the various items I made.

As a result, the mana I gained in my tower didn't increase linearly per person, but instead it dwindled. It was one of the reasons why I wanted to invent portal travel. If I could do that, I could of course increase the total number of visitors I had in my tower, and mana use, but there was a second benefit. I could make prefabs for various rooms, and connect them together with portals. That way, I could constantly change and create as many new rooms as I wanted, no two would be the same. It would also mean that two groups entering immediately after one another could end up in completely different rooms, which would solve the overcrowding issue that I would definitely feel when the amount of visitors I had increased.

The second problem I had with my tower was the creatures. Often when a creature was killed, their actions weren't as refined as they had been before. For example, I had created large salamanders with stone skulls covering their heads for the fifth floor. I had also flattened the shapes of their tails to thin blades, and each time one flicked the tip of its tail, I would give it a boost. In a week, one had become rather adept in using the tail to its advantage, that is until it was killed. The salamander was penetrated through its eye, leaving its brain still partially operational. It took a few minutes for it to fully die, and when I revived it, it acted like it had the moment I had first turned it into one of my creatures. It had forgotten most of the things it had learned before it was killed.

I obviously didn't want every creature to have to relearn all their skills, so I did some research. As it turned out, the quicker something died, the less time the soul spent separating from the body, and the fewer memories were lost. A slow death gave the soul time for death. Oliver had died in an instant, his entire body turned to dust in an instant, which was why his memories of his past were almost perfect. I had died nearly instantaneously from a nuclear blast, so I too had most of my memories. The salamander knew it would die for a long time, so its soul prepared for death. Or that's what I could figure out.

Hiveminds wouldn't have this problem, as I was fairly sure one of their bodies dying wouldn't cause memory loss, which was more incentive for me to start bringing people back to life. But I still wanted to do something that prevents non-hivemind creatures from losing their memories.

My final problem has to do with my runes. They weren't as versatile as I wanted them to be. Sure, they could already do a lot. But, I wanted combined runes to be akin to supercomputers capable of altering every aspect of reality, something that can be used to describe any and every action, calculation and concept possible. But so far the runes were a jumbled mess of symbols with mostly unrelated properties. I needed to somehow make my runes more connected with each other, I needed to make it possible for any effect to be achieved by combined runes. Maybe I should even make it possible for someone to create their own runes.

I was mulling over my thoughts, thinking of the similarities between my runes and similar writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, as something came to my awareness. It was a short text from the temporary domain of a tattoo. Oliver had sent me a message, and I had instinctively reacted by reading it as I blasted it away. The message wasn't good news at all.