Although I didn’t have a meditation skill to show for another sleepless night and aching joints, I didn’t come away with nothing. Although what I did get just deepened my questions.

Congratulations! Due to your actions, you have earned the title “Student of the Arcane”. Your knowledge of arcane pursuits grows, and you are thirsty for more. You haven’t made any major discoveries, but what you have found still makes you a more effect mage.

Congratulations! Due to your actions, you have learned the skill “Arcane Mastery Lvl 1”. Mana based skills will level up slightly more quickly. There is a very small increase in the chance for you to learn new skills. +1% maximum mana.

The addition to the maximum mana was the most pleasing part-

-Although the bonus to learning new skills is probably the most relevant…

But the manner in which I earned it was most confusing. While struggling fruitlessly to somehow work my will on the mana inside of me, I followed the train of thought I had the previous day. If mana wasn’t a resource… what was it?

I supposed that it was less a resource and more a quality of myself, like… a different kind of will. A will that had to do with causing skills to occur.

And just like that, I earned a new title and learned a new skill.

-But if mana is like will, what does that mean for increasing our mana regeneration?

-At least it makes sense why this method isn’t working. By just sitting here and thinking, you aren’t going to suddenly have a stronger will. It needs to be exercised.

-Following that train of thought… what we need to do to improve mana regen is to relax the muscle? Let it heal?

-Will and muscle are different, so I’m not sure if it follows. At least this is a movement in the right direction.

Rubbing my stomach, I set my thoughts aside and rose to head towards the building. Today’s breakfast was going to be a big one, and I hoped I could pass 2000 biomass with this meal.

-Whenever we finally level up… let’s become…

Other me and myself both paused, trying to think of the strongest thing we knew. Honestly..,. It was us.

-Sometimes the lack of memories seems ridiculous.

***POV Whipman***

Congratulations! Due to your actions, your skill has improved to “Storm Walking Lvl 6”. The speed with which you can travel through fractured space has increased. Slightly more stability in the fractured space. Explosion area upon exit of space increased.

Whipman stilled, his body trembling. The training he had been forcing himself through was incredibly demanding, so much so that he was having difficulty recovering from it. There were small gains, of course, but without a resilient body like Predator’s, Whipman had to completely rely on skill to compete at this level of the Tower.

Of course honestly, a normal participant through the tower would likely have half the difficulties that they had. It was one of the drawbacks of traveling with predator, who had a knack for selecting the most difficult targets on the floor and slamming himself against them…

Calming himself, Whipman looked idly at the dancing skeletons and murlocs. The strange new bone shaman had insisted, and honestly, the murlocs loved it. The skeletons didn’t tire, and had nothing to do anyway, so now their base had increased mana regen, and decreased health regen.

Looking at his own trembling arms, Whipman grimaced. Which meant his body recovered even more slowly from his training sessions. Perfect.

He briefly considered leaving the fort and training alone in the forest, but decided against it. Hardship gave birth to strength.

‘This,’ Whipman thought to himself. ‘Is hard.’

As Whipman once more gathered enough mana to Storm Walk, he considered the other problem facing him. After asking Ashni to marry him, she hadn’t exactly ignored him, but… She also refused to speak to him about anything other than Predator’s training. Whipman knew, deep down, that there was one way to progress.

Ashni was an old fashioned Tellite woman. The traditional way to announce an interest in a female is to challenge them to a duel, and lose well.

Whipman was quite sure that he would lose, but he was under no mistaken assumption that his loss would be done “well”; Ashni was strong. Monstrously so. When fighting with purely physical techniques, she could hold Predator to a draw, even though he was almost double as powerful as her, and had another foot of reach.

The only advantage he had was this created technique. By combining Wind and Thunder Stance, Whipman believed he now had an absolute advantage in maintaining the distance during a match. But that wouldn’t win him any awards in Ashni’s heart. She would simply mock him for running away…

Then it struck him; why not try to combine other stances to create new skills?

Very quickly, he struggled to control his rising excitement. He was lucky once, but twice…? Even his master hadn’t attempted to combine the stances like this. Although he had invented new ones, each was its own beast.

‘But… master always said I had something others did not… I might as well try,’ Whipman thought, stealing his resolve.

He clenched his fist and glared at the ground. Then he sighed. But how to start…?

Predator’s roar instantly wiped all his other thoughts away, and without hesitating, Whipman ran towards the center of the fort.

*****

Watching Predator kick the helplessly crouching Bone Shaman, Whipman turned to Jerry and Ashni.

“So, what’s happening?” He asked, inwardly hoping that Ashni would be the one to answer.

She didn’t even glance at him. After a few seconds, Jerry said. “It seems like Bone Shamans hate each other. Predator summoned 5 this morning before breakfast. By the time he came out, the originally summoned Bone Shaman had killed the new summons and was using their bones to construct a throne at the center of the formation…”

‘Which explains all the broken bones…” Whipman thought, looking at the pile with Black Bones skittering over it, as if he was searching for one that he liked.

Silently, Ashni turned and walked away.

“Ashni, wait. We need to talk.” Whipman said lamely, staring at her back.

She stopped to speak, but didn’t turn around. “I disagree.”

Whipman balled his hands into fists. Why was she avoiding him like this? What did it accomplish? It was childish? I mean sure, he wasn’t a core disciple of a big academy, but… weren’t his accomplishments enough?!?

Ashni began to walk away again, causing Whipman to hiss through his teeth.

“Ashni, I said we need to talk.”

“And I disagreed.” Ashni answered smoothly, still walking. “What of it?”

“STOP IT.” Whipman bellowed, “I’m tired of this. If you won’t stop….”

Ashni continued walking.

“ASHNI! When… When we pass the 10th floor of the tower, and we will, even if I have to drag us there myself, while we have a Reprieve… I c-c-challenge you to a duel!”

Whipman was panting by the time he finished. He was tired of being ignored, and too frazzled to calculate how much time this challenge would give him. All he knew was that-

Ashni stopped, slowly spinning on her heel to face him.

Was that-

She smiled slowly, and some part of Whipman recognized that she had spent too much time with Predator, because it was the long, slow, lazy smile of a hungry wolf.

“Excellent.” Ashni said coolly. “I think all that needs to be said, can be said with our fists.”

Was that-

She tilted her head to the side, and the softness of her hair was extremely obvious as it framed her face. “Don’t you agree?” Then she turned and walked away.

All he knew was that Ashni was the most lovely creature he had ever met.

Once she was out of line of sight, Whipman fell to his knees, still breathing heavily. Predator had walked up behind Whipman at some point, and looked at him kneeling, and then the direction that Ashni had departed, then back at Whipman.

“So…” Predator said in a strange tone, gazing at Whipman. “...Is this how you are supposed to indicate interest in the opposite sex?”

***POV Predator***

After Ashni disappeared, and Whipman hurried off to do what he called “secret training” I no longer had any instructors for the morning. Which was unfortunate; I was still quite annoyed by wasting my mana on summoning Bone Shaman this morning, and exercise would have helped me work that off.

-Oh well. Back to Stance practice I suppose.

-Well, while you handle that, I’m going to put more effort towards the mana regeneration issue.

As other me continued to focus on the stances while maintaining that strange lunar mist for skill experience, I walked over to the barely standing remnants of the outer wall. Although most of the damage was confined to the area that Yellow Bones fought the huge abomination, the rest of the wall had various holes and cracked stone from the beating of monkeys and skills that it had taken.

The idea for standing on the wall was to view the strange pattern that the Bone Shaman was using to affect the area. When I had Jerry talk to him earlier, the Bone Shaman was too blubbery about my anger to stammer out anything intelligible.

-Apparently. All he does is cackle anyways. How could Jerry tell?

-I agree, but you should be focusing. Get to it, bucko.

After scaling the wall, I turned and regarded the ridiculous looking dancing minions. If there was some secret hidden within the composition of the formation, I wanted to find it.

As I stood, observing the dancing, I had to admit that there was something profound about the movements. They seemed to be drawing and maintaining a profound symbol with their movements. Or rather…

...or rather they seemed to be conversing deeply with the world on a singular subject. Or…

...somehow forcing a resonance with the natural laws held within a certain area, causing the world itself to echo the desired sentiments…

I narrowed my eyes, attempting to remain focused on this train of thought. I could feel the word around me falling away as I let my eyes glaze over, simply keeping track of the broad shape, not the individual murloc and skeleton dancers.

A pounding began to grow behind my eyes.

Pushing my understand of what was going on to the limit, I began to make small predictions about how the shape they made would change. Because it did not remain constant, it grew and shifted. If I could at least predict the changes, even if I didn’t understand them, I could replicate it. Perhaps it would be possible to distill it to a base form that I could create more easily.

-Where are you getting these ideas. You have no idea what you are doing.

-At least I’m making progress. When is the last time you did anything with a non-Thunder Stance?

-Just as long ago as you.

But I ignored other me’s disparagements, my eyes unfocusing further.

Very quickly, I realized that the issue was perspective. Almost instinctually, my legs flexed, launching me high into the sky. About 50 m above the ground I lost momentum and began to stall, before slowly falling back towards the ground. But I created a platform of air to stand on, Other me grumbling about “training conditions”.

The entire formation was laid out before me, and the wide angle of viewing quickly made some more subtle truths about the formation jump to my attention. The formation itself suddenly seemed static, with the places that the lines intersected struggling to remain constant.

Struggling against what…? Against lines that seemed to be as uncooperative as a pissy rattlesnake, their bodies writhing back and forth.

The pounding in my head grew wider and wider, causing me to grimace. Even with my high pain tolerance, this was approaching an unbearable level. There was something… different about this pain. Perhaps most uncomfortable were the intermittent starbursts of sharp pain that originated from the center of the dull pounding.

My eyes were completely unfocused now, completely still and dry. Again and again the formation below me transformed becoming increasingly complex. I realized that the opposite corners held a relationship, and that the different writhing lines formed at least 3 triangles at all times. Yet these triangles weren’t symmetrical, and they could appear off and on in any section of the formation. Just as one was about to disappear, another would inexplicably be born in a different portion, infinitely shifting and-

Crack

Warning, due to excessive mental strain, your ability to control mana has been impaired for a short time.

The platform of air beneath my feet fractured and split, sending me tumbling downwards towards the ground. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes the formation was once again a series of dancing murlocs and skeletons, with more chaos and randomness than the profound truths I had felt like I was seeing earlier.

My headache was a constant throb, but it was noticeably fading, slowly growing more manageable. I supposed that pain was a side effect of the mental strain. Those intermittent sharp spikes of pain then were a sign of instability. But really, was I experiencing mental strain?

Heedless of our falling state, Other Me methodically moved through a stance, perhaps to spite me. Which of course spited himself, but he was always a stubborn asshole.

But I too was too preoccupied to care very much about our fall; it wouldn’t kill me.

Why was I experiencing mental strain? I would guess that the stat required was processing power or something similar, and mine was over 300. Is it perhaps more related to Wisdom? Even still, that stat was over 100.

Was there an undiscovered stat that I needed to comprehend the formation? I felt so close, and the closer I got, the worse the pain became. Or perhaps it would be a skill, something like Arcane Mastery-

Congratulations! Due to your actions, your skill has improved to “Wind Stance Lvl 2”. Your ability to grasp the essence of wind in martial arts is vastly increased. The speed of your attacks is slightly increased. Your chance of success in completing the moves of Wind Stance has grown.

-Ohoho, mock my training will you? We just needed a change of pace to throw off this funk.

-Really? Nextime let’s go stand in quicksand and maybe we will master earth and water stance in one fell swoop-

Boom.

The ground within 2 m cracked when we landed, making nearby murlocs jump in fright. As they jumped, they stopped dancing and slammed into the nearby skeletons who were dancing, who were knocked the side. All in all, the dancers tumbled like dominoes, falling down, until the ground was covered in piles of sprawling limbs.

Silence reigned for several seconds. I rubbed my forehead in annoyance.

Maybe trying to figure out the Bone Shaman’s formation was a waste of time.

***POV Whipman***

“Are you really really really sure?” Jen asked for the third time as her body slowly elongated from the position where her base was stuck to the ceiling.

Whipman nodded decisively. “I… I want… no, I need some space. I”ll go up first, and I’ll rush to the 10th floor. Once I’m there, I will immediately begin training… Tellus maintains a sizable amount of presence, and I’m sure they will allow me to stay there as I refine myself.”

“But why?”

Whipman opened his mouth to respond in affirmative again, but then did a double take because the question was different.

Smiling bitterly, he said. “Because I want to win. Contact me when Predator’s path is up for promotion.”

Jen remained silent, and watched him walk through the portal to the 6th floor.

***POV Predator***

After another huge dinner that involved me licking the table clean, I looked at my total biomass with satisfaction.

2372.

It was a good deal higher than I had ever been previously during a level up, and it would continue to rise before I had another chance to level up. After all, even if I could continue to train my skill proficiencies, it seemed like I couldn’t level up without defeating people.

Actually… I had no idea. I made a mental note to ask….

-Honestly who should I ask…?

-Jen probably would know, but…

She continued to remain moody, even though we haven’t eaten the strange jello food for days, regardless of how efficiently it converted volume into Biomass. So much so that she was always whispering pointedly to Ashni, immediately shutting up whenever I walked into the room for meals.

-Jerry then…?

Jerry was also a likely candidate, but I was currently avoiding him for other reasons. He mentioned at breakfast that he was almost done with the new census of minions, apologizing profusely at the delay. Apparently the murloc population had increased explosively, and he was having some difficulties traveling to the bottom of the moat to count them all.

When he had mentioned it, I didn’t think anything of it. But as I was about to head to dinner earlier, I saw him walked around, sopping wet and lugging around a pile of scrolls that likely weighed just as much as he does. I had a sinking feeling and waited until he left dinner before arriving.

-If he wants more approval regarding undead formations….

-He also has recommendations for optimal undead ratios….

-Do you remember how dead the eyes of the ghosts were after he took them for ‘training’? They came back so bored they looked lifeless.

-....they are ghosts. Do you want them to look lively…?

-...And the training regimens and schedules….

All in all, the prospect of conversing with Jerry while he had his ton of scrolls gave me a headache worse than the mental strain that ruined my mana control earlier.

-Except mana won’t go out of control, it will be temper.

As animated as Ashni could be when talking about Thunder Stance, any other topic simply made her snort with derision. Turnip was similarly insensible, except his weakness was archery. Black Bones was busy nibbling on his old bones. I wasn’t sure either the Haeugh or the Bone Shaman actually spoke, and I couldn’t use Jerry to translate.

-So…. Whipman….?

-I suppose so. We train with him tomorrow morning, so let’s ask him then. In the meantime…

Lunar mist slowly condensed around me. Then I pressed further, creating a mirror.

But, going off an instinct I had after looking at the formation. I made the mirror small. Just as large as a quarter. And while it was that size, I pressed.

-It must be flat.

-The energy must be constant.

-It must remain thin.

Press.

Press.

PRESS.

Abruptly, I felt something give, and immediately the amount of mental energy it took to maintain the mirror of lunar energy was reduced to almost nothing. The small mirror glowed with a powerful inner light, and the reflection it produced was sharp and detailed, seemingly even more real than the object it reflected.

Congratulations! Due to your actions, your have learned the skill “Lunar Reflection Lvl 1”. By condensing the highly volatile and delicate lunar mist, you have realized the methods to create a powerful mirror of lunar energy. Only an object’s true nature will be reflected in the lunar mirror. Also works on living beings. Mana costs slightly decreased. Reflections will be slightly more detailed than can be seen by the naked eye.

Congratulations! Due to your actions, your have learned the skill “Iron Will Lvl 1”. Periods of extended concentration and focus have allowed your will to be strengthened to an almost supernatural degree. Temptations and illusions are slightly less effective on you. Slightly higher chance of persevering in states of deprivation, weariness, or weakness.

-Hehe.

-And now…

After placing a small stone on the Lunar Reflection, I slowly clenched my fist. The lunar mirror trembled, then shattered.

The stone crumbled to dust.

Congratulations! Due to your actions, your have learned the skill “Lunar Break Lvl 1”. By shattering an object’s true essence, irreparable harm may be inflicted on an object. Also works on living beings. Shattering the mirror inflicts great harm upon the physical body of what is depicted. If it is a conscious being, a small amount of mental damage is inflicted.

-...the only problem is…

I grimaced, looking at my mana pool. Condensing a lunar reflection took around 200 mana, so a little less than 10% of my total. Meanwhile, shattering it took about 700. A little less than a third. That isn’t even counting the mana it took to create and maintain the lunar reflection.

-The only way to get those mana costs down is to train.

-But once again, mana doesn’t regenerate fast enough.

Looking around, I sighed. I guess I needed to talk to the Bone Shaman again. And I would stay up all night, likely without any results.

I took a break then, looking up at the sky. Honestly, I sorta just wanted to start battling again. Training was such a grind. It felt like my accomplishments were small. Comically so.

But still….

The image of that overwhelming power I encountered on the 1st floor still kept me from slacking. I had almost died and whoever that was hadn’t even needed to touch me. And that wasn’t even the top of the Tower. I had a strange instinct that there were monster much, much higher on the food chain then that person.

That was my goal. That’s what I wanted to become.