Kerto had been desperately trying to keep his guild's members from getting rid of their tattoos, assuring them that they could always head back to the guild's city before the time limit. It wasn't even that much of a lie, there was a slight chance that Valeria's clerics would leave them alone, as they focused their attack on the god. The earlier they tried killing Greto, the easier it would be, though if there were fewer tattoos in use, it'd be even easier.

Having been involved in killing a spirit a decade or so ago, Kerto knew that the moment the spirit was removed from its mana, it was gone for good. The tattoo's would only make it possible for someone to give mana to the god while the clerics and their god took it away. So if Greto was smart, he'd let the clerics take away all his mana from the tower, and make a new domain where the tattoos would be. Though there still was a good chance that the clerics would try to kill the god even then. Even if the god were further away from the goddess, they could still remain as risks to one another.

Either way, what would happen depended very much on how much the god was aware of. Did Greto know of an upcoming attack, or the reason behind it. Would he move away from fear, or fight back because he didn't realize fleeing would be an option.

Someone, one of the helpers, burst into the small building Kerto was in, with a stranger in tow.

"I'm, sir. I have… news," the helper said once he noticed Kerto. "This man is a priest to Greto." He said, pointing to the plain man who the helper had dragged with him. The 'priest' was dressed in simple clothing, and was much more healthy looking than the gaunt figure Kerto had come to associate with priests, but most of all were the intricate tattoos covering his skin.

"What proof do you have of this?" Kerto asked both of them.

"I saw it myself. You know the writings in the tower, the symbols shown with all the runes. Well, this man wrote with those same symbols, and blasted mana through his tattoo's at them. After that, I could feel Greto's domain expand over the area before the air itself spoke. Then more symbols appeared in the air before this man. He wants to help us and the city to stay as their clerics."

–

It isn't very often in life when one reaches a deep revelation of themselves, or the world around them. Before I had died, I hadn't reached such a point, but now… Since I had died, when I started to feel through even the slightest glimpses of reality. I had built upon that since the moment I came to my senses, feeling through scales smaller than atoms to the point where I reached an inmate understanding of reality that scientists back in the day could only dream of. I felt and understood atoms, quarks, photons, consciousness, mana, and even spacetime itself the same way someone with eyes understands colors. They might not know why something had color, but they innately knew what the color was.

And I could feel anything, and then I could manipulate it however I wanted, to the point of feeling the painful absence of everything, the void, itself. And yet, there was so much I hadn't even thought about.

I knew for a fact that I felt everything I did through mana connected with my soul. I had decided to give my tower a grand renovation, and I started it by gathering more space from beneath my tower to inside it, for more space in the same relative volume. I would be making dozens, if not hundreds, of rooms on each floor, that I could change how I wanted, and connect together with absences of space, with portals. Each floor would also have two special rooms, which were the staircase to the next floor, that would have some difficult to defeat creature or trap, and a resting room before that, which would also have exits to the outside of the tower. The idea was to send a message 'if you can't defeat this creature, you should head back and out of the tower.'

Anyways, I pulled the space from beneath the tower into it, and dug deeper to get more space to work with. Having more space to deal with would make keeping track of the difficulty of each room easier, but I did occasionally create small tears of nothing in space. I made quite a few small such holes in reality that mended themselves near instantly, except for one time. By accident, in my enthusiasm, I pulled a large chunk of space leaving nothing behind. The hole was huge, it took nearly a second for it to fill with space, and In that time, I could observe it.

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Through what felt like a migraine, which by itself was worrying, I saw atoms, light and everything heading towards the tear in space, that simply appeared on the other side of the nothingness, as if it wasn't there. And for all intents and purposes, the nothingness didn't exist. And yet, I could feel it, take hold of it, watch as it vanished and slowly become a big chunk of empty space, which quickly filled. And what that meant, was that mana and souls existed beyond reality. I existed beyond reality. I wasn't bound to anything in reality, I was a soul with mana, but beyond that, I knew nothing.

I was glad when the tear finally closed up, staring into the face of the void brought too many intrusion thoughts. But it was an explanation for the expansion of the universe, and how it could expand faster than light. Space was continuously created to cover up all the miniscule holes in reality. And it did give me a glimpse to where souls came from, and where they occasionally disappeared. Where I might eventually disappear to.

I stopped expanding the space inside my tower. It already had about 8 times the volume compared to what it looked like outside, which also meant time inside my tower would move twice as fast that outside of it, since the width, height and length of the inside had all been doubled. I could only imagine the sense of oddness I'd be feeling once I got portals between rooms running.

For the moment, I built walls around the existing rooms, so that nothing changed in the previously created rooms and floors. They seemed to be the same size, time just moved faster in them, and they were surrounded by hollow walls. That way, I had time to create new rooms, refine my plans and runes, and more importantly, start my requirement process. I needed something to fill the new rooms, and having more intelligent creatures, and the human souls capable of giving me ideas would help a whole lot.

–

The fifth floor had been passed nearly as quickly as the fourth. It was composed of seven rooms, one being a large central hexagonal room, where they entered. It was covered entirely in hundreds of various colored tiles that shone with light coming from beneath them, and a door on each of the six walls. Behind each door there were various creatures, varying from a large lizard with a very thick skull and a bladed tail that it could flick to fly forwards, to a mass of acidic worms covered in sharp shards of steel. Each door had rewards behind them, and one had a moving room to the sixth floor.

Luckily for the group, Evelyn once again knew the layout of the room beforehand. Each tile was a trap, but one color was safe. The rooms and safe tiles were random each day, but they could figure them out easily enough by throwing various objects on the tiles to set their traps off. This time, the cyan tiles were the safe ones.

The first door they'd opened had the mass of worms behind them to the group's disgust. The moment the door was opened, the worms flowed out like water. After the initial surprise, the worms weren't exactly dangerous, just… As the worms covered a few tiles, they set the traps off. Some were frozen in ice, others were cooked instantly with a column of fire, and a majority were blasted in the air, scattering bits of metal, acid and worm in all directions. Once they fell from their short flight, more traps were set off, leaving the trio standing still on their cyan tile, surrounded by a mass of wriggling, burnt chaos, and covered in small burning droplets of slimy acid.

Michelle sacrificed a chunk of her mana to drench the three of them in cold water, before pushing the door closed with her mana. She didn't want to go in search of any magic item from the remaining wriggling mass in the room.

"Never… Again," Audrey said over his belching.

"I- '' Michelle started to say, before conjuring some water in her mouth, and spitting it out. "I got some in my mouth." Audrey belched harder. The rest of the floor was passed in stoic silence, only broken by Evelyn's occasional barely covered giggles.