Book 3, Chapter 63 (Patreon)

Nobody bothered to ask what I’d been up to, and I didn’t go out of my way to volunteer. They were more interested in the teleportation circle I’d built in their safehouse. Specifically, they wanted to know about how it cut through the tower’s interference and allowed for inter-floor teleportation. I left them to study that while Averin dragged me off to another room.

“What’s this news you’re so excited about?” I asked after I’d settled back into my familiar ruined-upholstery chair.

“As I’m sure you’ve learned, the checkpoints between floors make it difficult for us to move freely. That’s partially how we encountered you in the first place, with a group moving outside the tower to use the teleporters there to skip floors. Though, if these teleportation circles you’ve made could be placed on every floor, that would certainly make things easier for us…”

Averin shook his head and snapped out of his musings. “Anyway, penetrating the top fifty floors has been a challenge we’ve been mostly unable to overcome. There are a few members with the clout to temporarily access floor one hundred, but no one’s getting close to the Great Houses at the top currently. I found the command room on floor ninety-nine, however. With that, we can create our own passage up into the top floors. It’ll be slow going, but I think we can eventually get all the way up to one-fifty.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “I’m sure this will advance your plans considerably, but I fail to see what it has to do with me.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Averin said. “The wards change there and I can’t get in. We were hoping to get you to take a look at them.”

“How long would it take to get me up there?”

“Two days, maybe.”

“I’m sure I have better things to do.”

“Yes, it is a problem. It’s difficult to smuggle you through checkpoints. The security is a lot looser on the lower floors, but once you get past seventy or so, things tighten up. We’ve got far fewer people sympathetic to our cause up there.”

Go figure. The rich who benefited from the current system were opposed to the terrorists trying to tear it down. I couldn’t find it in me to fake being surprised by the news.

“Your circles might be the answer,” Averin said. “If we could get one in place up there, you could just jump straight from here to ninety-nine. How long would it take you to make another one on a platform?”

“Oh, I already have several fabricated,” I said. “How would you transport it?”

“There are freight elevators that go between floors regularly,” the Breaker told me. “Perhaps something could be worked out with the operators there. Where did you store the spare platforms?”

I reached into my phantom space and pulled one out to land on the floor next to us. Averin flinched in surprise, then whistled appreciatively. “Now that’s not a trick I see too often. It’s rare even among the Houses. I’d thought yours was just to hold your staff, but something this big…”

“How rare?” I asked. Averin was someone placed highly in this society; I was sure of it. Maybe I could figure out exactly how high with a few questions.

“For anyone associated with the four Great Houses, common. For the lesser Houses, the oldest, most experienced, and highest-ranking members usually have phantom spaces. For the influential government officials, it’s rare, but not unheard of. Anyone else…” He trailed off and shook his head.

“I’ll assume you do not have one, then.”

“No, not even close. Even the small ones bound to rings or necklaces are far beyond my means to acquire. I hesitate to suggest this, but perhaps if you were willing to loan me your phantom space… It would be invaluable, but I honestly don’t have anything I could offer as collateral to ensure its safe return.”

“That won’t be possible, I’m afraid,” I told Averin. He nodded, unsurprised, probably thinking I was just unwilling to part with a valuable trinket. The truth was that my phantom space was bound to my mana core and I couldn’t give it to anyone. I could make a phantom space bound to an item like he was thinking, but that version was so inferior to a true phantom space that I’d never bothered preparing one in advance.

There were ruinously expensive mana costs—at least, outside the tower where mana wasn’t freely available—just to maintain the space, not even mentioning activating it. They could hold almost nothing, with even the biggest ones being a bare fraction of the size of mine. Most annoyingly, one phantom space could not be put inside another, and using multiple spaces at the same time was a good way to get ripped in half.

“Why do you need to get up to the top of the habitable floors?” I asked. I knew that their general goal was to cause destruction and chaos to weaken the government, but I wondered if they were planning to go so far as to assassinate highly-placed government officials, maybe even attack the ruling council itself.

“Ultimately, we’d like to get a shot at the patriarchs of the four Great Houses,” Averin said, “but that’s probably a dream that will remain out of our reach for a long time. The patriarchs are said to be rank fives.”

I wondered if that corresponded to the system I’d grown up with. If Ammun truly was the founder of this civilization, it would stand to reason that he’d measure core progress the same way. A rank five and a stage five were probably the exact same thing, but just to be sure, I decided to clarify that.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said. “My own culture uses different terminology. What is a rank five?”

“Someone who’s managed to essentially turn themselves into a living mana crystal,” Averin said. “It makes them extremely resistant to all forms of magic, grants them greatly enhanced lifespans, and all but eliminates their need for sustenance.”

That all lined up with my knowledge of stage five mana cores, though there were some other benefits Averin had failed to list. Either he didn’t know about them, or he felt they weren’t relevant. I was betting on the former.

“I see. And is anyone higher than rank five?”

“Only in myths and legends,” he said with a laugh. “Supposedly, there was someone who was rank six back when the tower was first built. He bonded with the entire tower somehow, but of course, the old stories never mention how he achieved that possibility.”

“Of course. They never do.”

“I’ll figure out a way to get this transported up to floor ninety-nine and get back to you,” Averin said, dragging the conversation back on track again. “Hopefully you’ll recognize whatever is different about these wards. If not, well, I think I can break them eventually, but it’ll be trial and error, and we both know how dangerous that is.”

“Get the platform into place and we’ll see if I can help,” I said. “In the meantime, were you informed about the mana wraiths in the maintenance sublevels?”

“Mana wraiths? No, this is the first I’m hearing of it.”

He’d probably crossed the messengers going up on his way down, but the Breakers were so secretive, they hadn’t recognized each other. Even as their leader, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume Averin wouldn’t recognize all of the multiple thousands of Breakers on sight. And that wasn’t even considering their propensity for keeping their faces covered.

“The four who went down with me helped slow them down enough for us to make a fighting retreat of it, but there were a lot of mana wraiths down there. I’m wondering if you have any theories about what’s below us that might explain it.”

“We don’t know much beyond that there are maintenance sublevels down there,” Averin said, frowning.

“Well, what’s below those then? I’ve seen the outside of the tower. It goes a long way down.”

“I would assume just the foundation. It must be absolutely massive considering how high into the sky the Sanctum of Light goes. I doubt there’s anything in it.”

I shook my head. “There must be something. There are far too many mana wraiths for it to just be empty, purposeless hallways. Where did they come from? Why are they trapped down there?”

“I wish I had some answers for you, but I’m afraid I don’t know. I will make some discreet inquiries with a few historians and see if I can turn anything up if you’re sure this is important, but for now, let’s focus on the task at hand, yes?”

“Yes, yes. Go on then, get this platform out of here and let me know when you’re ready for me to teleport to it,” I said. “I’ll be around.”

Averin frowned down at the platform. “This will be… difficult for us to transport without shrinking it down. I’m worried about distorting the runes if I do, however.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “They’ll hold.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I told him, annoyed. I did not like when people questioned my work. If I said it was fine, then it was fine.

Averin cast a stone shape spell to shrink the platform down to the size of a small disk, then threw a gravity twist on it to make it feel significantly lighter. He slipped it into his pocket and told me, “Alright, this should make it a bit easier to get into place then. What will you do while you wait?”

“A bit of exploring outside the tower, I think. I’m curious what’s at the very top.”

The Breaker leader considered that idea for a second, but had no answer. “I would be interested to hear what you learn, but I doubt it’s terribly relevant, not unless you can get to the top floor by coming down from the roof.”

I was sure it wouldn’t be as easy as all that, but I didn’t have much better to do besides wraith extermination and tutoring Senica. Those were both worthwhile activities, but not urgent ones. The only other thing on my plate was my own advancement to stage five, which would necessitate a trip back to Sanctuary to accomplish. I could meet the mana requirements now, but there was a lot of other prep work I needed to finish up.

Now that I thought about it, I could probably manage that in a week or two, maybe less. It would certainly help my exploration with the lower levels. A stage five core—and the attendant body modifications that came with it—would make it significantly easier for me to deal with the mana wraiths and the heavy mana in those lower floors. The problem there was that I didn’t think my new allies would appreciate it much if I disappeared for a few weeks in the middle of their plans. Advancing to stage five now might very well kill any chance of cooperation I had.

I’d keep a watch for an opportunity. Whatever Averin was planning on doing on the top floors, it might take long enough that I could work on my own projects. In the meantime, I’d refill my mana crystal to its maximum capacity, teleport back down to the sublevel I’d left off on, and continue my exploration. There was something down there; I just had to find it.

The Breakers left the safehouse in small groups, usually no more than two or three. They spaced out their exits by a half an hour each time, but eventually, I was left alone again. Annoyingly, no one had thought to offer me any food, and their safehouse was nothing but a shoddily-furnished building. It was a good thing I had my own.

I sat down to focus on processing ambient mana and began to plan my route deeper into the labyrinthine depths of the Sanctum of Light.