The very first thing Evelyn had done once her lessons were over, was to head towards Valessa for food. She hadn't eaten breakfast, and it already was lunch time. It was as she walked the long way around the spirits domain, though Evelyn wasn't sure why she bothered with the extra distance, that she heard a familiar crack of air echo through the trees. Then the sound repeated over and over, before Evelyn heard a faint scream. Someone else must have been given the same tattoo she had, nothing else made a noise quite like it did, and the person using the tattoo probably got badly hurt. Not knowing what else she could do, Evelyn started running towards the direction the sounds came from.

Evelyn reached half way to where she heard the scream come from, before she was filled with dread. The trees had blocked her view of it, but now she could see an immense tower. It was wider than her entire village, and taller than Evelyn thought possible. Even the stories about the ancients had nothing remotely like what was infront of Evelyn's eyes, a pillar of night sky reaching past the heavens.

The frightening part was, the spirit had to have built the massive tower, and the tower that was probably tall enough to crash on the gates of Valessa if it fell over. A spirit's domain always spread in a perfect circle, as wide as it was tall. The tower being as tall as it was, could only mean that its reach was almost as large as that of Valeria, and she was a centuries old goddess. It seemed to be growing unnaturally fast, and the only way for a spirit to grow so fast was through death.

Evelyn redoubled her efforts in running towards the base of the tower, where she now realized the noise had come from. The spirit had likely killed hundreds of helpers over the morning to have grown so huge. Maybe Priest Thomas had hired more experienced helpers to kill the spirit.

Evelyn finally came upon the base of a tower. It was built from perfectly smooth obsidian, but apart from that, nothing seemed odd. There was nothing to make a person scream. Evelyn started walking around the tower, until she saw it. A boy, one of the six children in her class, lay unmoving in a pond of blood.

At first Evelyn thought the boy was dead, but she saw the unconscious boy's chest slowly rise, and could feel a faint pulse when she checked. For a moment Evelyn wondered where the boy was wounded, until she noticed the limp and unattached right arm laying a few steps to the boy's side.

Now knowing where the boy was hurt, Evelyn immediately went to stop any possible bleeding. But when she revealed the stump from underneath the boy's clothes, it wasn't bleeding. Instead, every single part of flesh uncovered by skin, was near pitch black, the same color as Evelyn's tattoo. Had the spirit stopped the boys bleeding?

Evelyn decided breakfast could wait, so could the priest, and gently lifted the boy in her arms. Making sure that the spirit made no move to attack her, Evelyn started walking towards the village. It didn't take long before a mass of adults, led by five children came running towards Evelyn. Together they placed the child to bed. There was no immediate danger, but when the boy woke up, they could take him to a cleric and see if his arm could be restored.

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I didn't want to give deadly magic tattoos to everyone, that meant no kids, and also no irresponsible adults. Earlier today, a child had nearly died because of my tattoo, and I could have easily prevented it, simply by making sure the children didn't point at each other. But I didn't want to personally watch if my carbon would cause harm every time someone used one, and if someone was outside of my domain, I wouldn't even be able to see who they're pointing the tattoo at. I also wanted my tattoos to do the same exact thing every time they were used, because if they weren't reliable, people wouldn't want to use them. All that meant, I needed a system to make sure a person was responsible before I ever give them a tattoo. The solution I came up with for all this, was to build a sort of trial in the first floor of my tower.

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A trial that would make sure that only those who won't kill everyone in sight by purpose or accident. It of course meant that not everyone would get a tattoo, but if I made the trials life threatening to those who are unworthy, I could get their mana. Or I could just keep the unworthy ones inside my tower for a while to drain their magic, before releasing them back outside.

For my first floor trials, I was thinking of building a sort of puzzle to test a human's wisdom, maybe some sort of combat to see if they're murderous, and a few other possible tests to get an idea of a persons personality before deciding if I killed them, imprisoned them, or rewarded them.

The first floor trials weren't even the only idea that I'd come up with. I had the brilliant idea to give people different shaped tattoos. I'd given perfectly circular ones to everyone so far and when they gave their magic to me through them, I simply used the magic to push things away from their hand. The more magic given, the more stuff I could push faster. It gave the user slight control of their tattoo, making them more like bows than guns.

But let's say I gave someone a tattoo shaped like a flame. It's purely asthetic of course, but when someone pushed magic through the flame tattoo, instead of using the given magic to push stuff away, I could use it to heat stuff and then push it away. Or a tattoo shaped like the sun, and then I could use the given magic to gather light infront of the hand.

Of course I could do all those things with any carbon sphere tattoo, no matter what shape, but I couldn't know if the tattoo user wanted to heat stuff, or freeze it. The different shapes would enable me to have a wider range of things the tattoos did, without any problems caused by the lack of me being unable to read minds. I could simply feel the shape of the new magic I gained through a tattoo, and then do a specific thing determined by the shape of that magic. Then eventually, I would react and do what the shape of the new magic tells me to do without any thought, out of pure instinct. The same way how I used to have to slowly and tediously build the shape of a living cell in my mind by going through all the individual molecules, but now I can recognize cells, and even multicellular organisms just like that.

This idea of different shaped magic carbon sphere tattoos didn't end there however. I could make hundreds, or thousands, of different shapes that I could use to cause really specific effects, sense their surrounding areas, and most importantly, I could use them as logic gates. I could give a person a collection of tattoos, for example a gate tattoo, two sensory tattoos to sense magic getting pushed through them, and two separate effect tattoos. That way I could do something like if magic goes through this sensory tattoo, then use it to do this, and if magic goes through both sensory tattoos, then do something else. I could create more complex tattoos capable of doing more, but the user could still use it effectively. The user could choose between heating stuff, or freezing it, all without me having to give it any extra thought.

But this system of combined tattoos wasn't just limited to what I gave people, instead I could give people the carbon spheres by themselves, and the people could then use that to paint the symbols they want on the things they want. They could take a boot, and draw the right symbols with my carbon spheres to push the boot in the air when magic is pushed through the symbols. In other words, I could give people the power to enchant magic items. Now that I had thought of the idea, I definitely didn't want to give it up. At that moment I also decided what I could do with the rest of the tower. The first floor would be the trials, where the prize is a tattoo. The rest of the floors would be even more trials, where the prize would be carbon spheres, and knowledge of more different shapes that the trial takers could use to enchant items, or even themselves.

I was so giddy with my new ideas, that I almost skipped making the first floor trials, and nearly started coming up with ideas and designs for the different tattoos, or rather carbon symbols. I thought it wasn't appropriate to call them tattoos, when the symbols might end up being drawn on something like a bucket.

Eventually, I had built a room between the entrance and the altar room. It had a simple logic puzzle in it, I wasn't focused enough to come up with anything actually intelligent. So instead there just were large stone rings which someone would have to rotate according to different symbols carved to the walls in the room. Then when they rotated them to the right orientation, I would open the door to the altar room. The circles also were heavy enough that I doubted a child being able to spin them. It definitely wouldn't be my final design for the trials, but it was good enough for now. I finally allowed myself to start coming up with the different ideas and designs for the different carbon symbols, and to carve their explanations all over the inside of the tower.