The four of Edward, Alice, Kenan, and Emily all gathered in the clearing beside their shelter, even spaced and each with a measure of nervousness and anticipation. The plan to explore the new world and gather information before deciding how to approach using their embryonic tower cores had been made the day they had descended on the Distorted Void.

Now, they had managed to produce a sizable list of all the rule fragments they encountered as well as a collection of potential materials. The pressure of the unknown had always been bearing down on the group ever since they arrived, but it had greatly increased with Charlene’s mysterious death. With the reduction in manpower, it was time for the remaining four to finalize their decisions and become tower masters.

The three that already possessed their towers stood to the side, observing the occurrence. Leopold’s emotions had slightly stabilized with Griffin’s patient counseling, but his condition was still a mess.

Edward was the first to move. He took out a drab chunk of ore with small sparks of blue flickering in it. It was a piece of electrode ore. As Edward revealed, it contained metal and lighting magic and mechanical rule fragments. Kenan held the piece of metal he had proudly showed off before.

Alice chose a magic crystal as her starting material, believing that magic would be key to uncovering more about this world, and that the set of complete magic of the magic crystal was the most suitable. Emily, who had always been indecisive about what to pick, decided to choose whatever material Alice did. She too was holding a magic crystal. Chronus held fond feelings for towers birthed from magic crystals, the tower of his previous life was made from one and he had met many others who did the same.

“Let’s start!” said Edward with a firm voice.

The four inspired their embryonic tower cores and absorbed the materials in their hands. Not long after, they were holding the complete form of their tower cores, ready to be placed and start their journey as tower masters.

None of the others had agreed with Chronus’ decision to root his tower in the forest. They felt that the wisest choice was to have everyone group their towers together around their shelter, forming a defensive formation. This would ensure a safe area that they could jointly develop. The barren location and distance from any nearby resources wasn’t a downside to them, as it would allow them to easily discover any approaching dangers.

They proceeded to place their towers according to the plan, a wide distance from each other’s and the towers of Griffin and Leopold but not too far from the rock formation that marked their camp.

A tall metal structure housing a gear structure appeared around Edward’s tower core. Surrounding Kenan’s grew a smooth metal spire. The shape was almost a perfect cone and was made of a dark gray metal. Alice and Emily had almost identical towers. A tower made of stone shining with lines of rainbow colors.

The group didn’t do any other actions following the establishment of their towers. Their energy had been drained from a day of exploration. Immediately after, the unexpected event of Charlene’s passing made them construct their towers earlier than expected.

“Today had been an eventful day. We should all take a good rest and further explore our towers and abilities tomorrow,” said Edward to the agreeable audience.

Chronus didn’t bother to stay with them the following day to accompany them in their experimentation. He also had a lot of tasks on hand that he needed to complete. He knew that the temporary peaceful atmosphere of the surrounding areas would not always maintain itself, and that he needed to urgently increase his strength.

When he arrived at the site of his own tower, he didn’t immediately begin to try and improve it. The first thing he needed to do was test the tower’s current capabilities and shortcomings to see what was the best direction for its development.

To begin with, Chronus tested the physical defenses of the tree demon. He lightly sliced at the bark with his axe. There was some resistance, but the blade sank in with a second blow. He shook his head. This defense was too weak. The tree had inherited the poor durability of the magewood tree. He knew that this would happen, but it being this poor was disappointing.

He then hacked at the tree with all his strength, carving out a large gash horizontally. Carefully observing the condition of the tree, the wound was slowly closing as fibers extended from the open ends of the cut and wove together. It would take a while before the tree fully restored itself to its complete state, but the regenerating ability of plant creatures was very useful.

Chronus perceived the tower core and the energy remaining inside. The regeneration had barely used up any energy. The passive recovery of mana could sustain the regeneration of similarly sized injuries of the tower with no issues. It would be more difficult to keep up with the healing if it received extensive injuries, but after seeing the tower’s performance so far, Chronus already made up his mind to shore up the tree’s physical defenses.

Chronus also needed to test the magical resistance of the tower. His current system of witchcraft was poorly suited for the task, so he planned on simulating the effects of elemental magic by exposing the tree to a large fire. A large pile of dry branches was soon set ablaze beside the pond, where it could easily be put out if it tended to go out of control.

Connecting to the tower core, he controlled the tree demon to extend one of its roots into the blazing bonfire. A minute in and the wood finally showed signs of burning as the outer bark slightly peeled away and was partially charred. The elemental resistance of the tree was much more satisfactory. Despite fire having a slight attribute restraint against the tree demon, it still managed to hold itself up to the test.

Next, Chronus led the tower to lean its entire body into the flame, but this time with it using its spirit abilities. The mouths of the many distorted faces inhabiting the bark of the tree demon opened and poured out a white mist. The mist condensed and formed a slight barrier around the entire tower. With the addition of this barrier, the tree was now able to withstand the fire without any problems.

He checked the energy levels in the tower core and found that the spreading of the spirit mist did require a lot of mana, but the energy required for its repair now that it had been activated was much more bearable. The long exposure to the surging bonfire was almost a similar level to a rank 1 fireball spell. The current tower being able to thwart magical attacks of this level made Chronus’ mood improve slightly from the test of its physical defense.

The fire naturally burned itself out after Chronus stopped supplying it with fuel, and he could continue his last experiment of the tower’s capabilities, which was its offensive ability. The current tree demon could only attack enemies by either lashing out at them with its roots or by entangling them and slowly squeezing them to death.

The tree crawled over to a nearby pine tree and launched a fierce whip at it with one of its roots. A large section of the pine tree caved in, sending splinters flying out in all directions. The remaining section of the pine tree’s trunk was unable to support itself and slowly cracked and collapsed under its own weight.

The tree demon then tried to attack a boulder with its roots, but only managed to inflict injuries on itself, not leaving much of a mark on the stone. However, when it wrapped up the boulder and gradually exerted force, the boulder eventually reached a point where it couldn't stand up against the increasing force applied to it and cracked. The force exerted by a tree’s roots can’t be underestimated. After all, even a small tree was always something that could easily break through cement.

After an in depth examination of the tree demon’s abilities, Chronus came up with an initial plan for its development. The magic resistance wasn’t something he needed to further augment, it was already sufficient with the barrier made by its spirit abilities. The physical defense was something that urgently needed to be improved, and so were the tower’s other abilities. He didn’t plan on having his tower become a melee brawler, and both the speed and variety of its attacks left a lot to be desired.

The priority of improving the tower’s defense was a lot higher to Chronus compared to adding abilities to the tower. With this as his goal, he planned to splice the outer armor of an ironbark tree onto the tree demon and fuse the two together. This tree was not currently in his possession, so he prepared himself to venture deeper into the dark forest.