Evelyn kept switching between staring at the shattered remains of the feather, and her mysterious new tattoo. The silence in the classroom lasted for a few seconds before Michelle broke it. "What, in the name of Valeria, did you just do?"
"Nothing... I mean, I did what you told me to do." Evelyn answered.
"You'd have me believe that you, a person who claims to have absolutely zero experience with mana manipulation, shot a feather in the air so fast it shattered?"
"No, I mean yes? ...Maybe it's the tattoo." Evelyn tried weakly.
"The mysterious tattoo? Is it made from magic ink now?" Michelle deadpanned.
"Maybe." Evelyn said, though they both knew magic wasn't real, no matter how much mana manipulation seemed like it.
"Alright." Michelle sighed, accepting that Evelyn had no more idea on what she had done, than what she herself had. "Here, try to do the same thing with your left hand. And make sure you don't point it at anyone." Michelle said as she gave Evelyn a second feather. Evelyn tried, the feather floated barely a knuckles width up from her palm. Then she switched back to her right, and once again the feather shot to the roof with a bang.
"Spirits! That could kill someone. It might even kill me. And you know I can block arrows with my mana. Yet here you are, with a magic tattoo and bloody feathers." Michelle said, raising her hands in the air out of clear frustration.
Michelle had spent the majority of her life learning the ins and outs of mana manipulation. She had spent hours every day just to gather more mana, and days on end of practicing with it. With one and a half decades of practice, she could lift stones weighing tons, softly land from any height, and so much more. Now, Evelyn could shoot a feather through the air faster than Michelle thought possible, seemingly thanks to a tattoo. "Tell whatever spirit gave you that, that I want a magic tattoo too."
Evelyn's heart nearly froze the moment she heard Michelle's words. The thought hadn't even occurred to Evelyn. Had she accidentally walked through the spirits domain? She had walked the long way around what she'd thought was the outer reach of the monster, so it was unlikely. Unless the spirit had grown a lot in just a few days, but then again, Evelyn was sure that she would have realized it if she'd had the tattoo the previous day. The tattoo had to be given to her as she slept she realized, and her face grew pale.
"Was it something I said?" Michelle asked with concern.
Evelyn nodded in reply, before saying, "The evil spirit I warned everyone about... I think my house is in its domain, and it gave me the tattoo."
"Oh, that isn't too bad then." Evelyn stared at Michelle in indignation. "I mean, if it was going to kill you, wouldn't it have already done that? Not to mention that more people have started using the road again, and none of them have died. Maybe it isn't the evil spirit you thought it was."
"I guess, but that doesn't make me feel safe sleeping in its domain. Who knows what else it might do to my body."
"Other than give you a second really useful tattoo, you mean? Because that tattoo really is useful. The way I see it, that tattoo is proof that a spirit can give us powers that work outside of their domains, because we for sure aren't in one right now. And you've found a spirit willing to give you that power. It might be limited to just shooting stuff, or it could grow to powers rivaling the clerics of Valessa. Imagine how much more the helpers could do, how much more the average poor peasant could do. Those tattoos might even make us able to fight against the Western Tyrant for all we know."
Evelyn was baffled. "You came up with all that, from me shooting a feather with a tattoo?"
"Yeah... Maybe a bit much, but that's besides the point. The point is, we don't know if the spirit is evil, but it doesn't seem to be. It could easily have merely given a bad first impression, and now it has offered you something that might become extremely useful. I don't think you need to be afraid of it."
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"So what should I do then?"
"I don't know. Continue life as normal? But no matter what you do, I want to get a tattoo for myself, and maybe for Audrey too. If nothing else, they could be really good for self defense. So what do I have to do, just stay in the spirits domain for long enough? Maybe go visit the clearing you mentioned?"
As Evelyn groaned at her enthusiastic friend, neither she nor Michelle saw the wide grins the young students were sharing between one another.
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I was enjoying a nice and relaxing day of tower building. It had started out more complex than I thought, since I needed to gather the building materials from somewhere. At first I thought that I could just vacuum the air from outside my domain, and then break and combine them to make more stone for the tower. It turned out to be slower than I thought, so I went for another method to get my materials. I moved them from the dirt under me. For every ten meters my tower grew up, it grew a meter below the ground. I wasn't entirely sure what I would use the space for, but it would be there if I ever needed it.
When the tower reached two hundred meters tall, I realized my second problem. I wasn't an engineer, and I definitely didn't know how to build a huge tower that was also stable in the wind. I resorted to simply using magic to hold it in place, but I did want to build it more stable in the future.
It took a long time of boring, repetitive work before the tower reached the height I wanted it to. It was shaped like a simple cone with the top half cut off, at maybe a bit over 100 meters wide at the base, 50 at the top, and reaching high above the ground. Constructed of a uniform silicon and oxygen rich stone I found buried in the ground. It may have been very simple in its design, and still completely hollow on the inside, but I was proud of it. I had created a building that was probably taller than anything humans had ever built, in less than a day. Sure, without magic it would collapse in an instant, and I couldn't have even built it, but it was still amazing. Now, I just needed to give it an interior, and an entrance. Then people from all over would be compelled to come, and get my carbon spheres or whatever other treasures I might fill the tower with. If only I could figure out how to make gold.
For now, I would go for something simple. Maybe a vast entrance leading to a room with an altar that bent the very light around it. People could then place their hands there to get the carbon spheres imbedded in their palms. Yeah, that sounded like it could work. Then once I'm finished with the altar, I just would need to figure out how to get people to push as much magic as possible through the carbon spheres. I could still go with my original plan, and fill the tower with challenges that give rewards, and could only be passed through with the use of my spheres.
I had absolutely no idea what it would look like to the human eye, but I was sure my altar room was beautiful. I had painstakingly carved it full of detail, fractal triangles patterned the entire floor repeating itself from the size of the entire room to that of atoms. The altar itself was like a tree stump spiraling upwards from the floor, with the shape of a hand imprinted on the top. I even went to the effort of using a portion of my multitasking mind to pull all the light around the altar towards it, like a black hole with the altar in place of the event horizon. The final detail I added was the entrance. It was a simple semicircle with more intricate spiraling details, like braided hairs of stone, surrounding it. Then finally, I added a simple plaque above the entrance. Written with what might be gold, it read in a smooth flowing cursive "Tower of Tim".
Yes, I was egotistic enough to name it after myself.
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It didn't take long before the first people stumbled in my tower. They were smaller than I had thought, only barely able to reach the top of the altar to get their carbon spheres, so I made the altar slightly lower. One at a time, all six of the small people –maybe they were dwarves, though they didn't have beards.– placed their hands on the altar, and earned their tattoos.
They were excitedly testing them, pushing their magic through them for me to take control and shoot whatever they held. They seemed to be having fun, and I was gaining loads of magic. It didn't take long before I was helping them almost subconsciously, and I started planning on what I would do with the rest of the enormous tower.
My thoughts came to a halt as I felt the tickling of air that came with a scream. I focused on the six dwarves who were still in my domain, just outside the tower entrance. One of them was on the ground, screaming probably because they were missing an arm. None of the other dwarves were helping their friend, instead they were helplessly just standing there, before they ran towards the village like children.
My thoughts came to a halt, they were children, not dwarves. I couldn't fathom why it had taken so long for me to realize, it was almost like I had forgotten of the entire existence of children. That definitely wasn't a good sign, but at least I had a good idea what to do with my tower. I needed something to make sure I would never again give tattoos to irresponsible young kids. Now though, I would stop the child's bleeding. I just needed to put carbon spheres on the stump, and then close off all the places blood was coming out of. It wouldn't be good publicity if a child with a carbon tattoo was killed in my domain.