The sun has just barely risen by the time we finish planning out the day. Daniel and Corvax will spend the morning hunting, hopefully fixing our food and water situation, but with Corvax now joining us, we will need a lot more than before. While they look for food, I will spend my time walking along the top of the wall, scouting the city and the other towers before we have to go in and kill the bear.
Daniel and Corvax leave for the forest, but not before I ask Daniel to make me a crowbar, and I start my trek along the wall, looking for anything useful or interesting. My regular vision can see much further into the city than my spatial perception can, so I focus it mostly inside the wall itself and on the buildings closest to the wall. The inside of the wall is filled with more empty rooms, long hallways, and the occasional staircase leading up to the top, most filled with nothing but dust and stale air. I pull out one of the red crystals from one of the support ants and start creating a simple map, marking the few rooms that do have surviving items, like what looks like an armory and another room that appears to have been a kitchen in the lower levels of the wall.
I keep walking until I come to the first tower upon my little journey. It looks exactly like our tower, inside and out, except for the door, which is old and rusting away, unlike our door, which Daniel has repaired and fortified. The door opens after a firm kick, and I step inside, immediately going for the top floor, where my first prize of the day sits.
Eight magical screens lay set into the walls of the room like windows, showing a full panoramic view, albeit slightly grainy and occasionally flickering.
With no fear of breaking the thing, as I have a basically unlimited supply as long as the other towers are unlooted, I shove the crowbar in between the screen and the wall and start prying. The screen chips and breaks into small pieces wherever I try to pry it out, so after a few minutes of frustration, I end up just smashing the screen to see what’s behind it.
The screen stops working after about half of it falls off, and after I clear the rest of it, I pick some of it up to inspect the material. The very front layer seems to just be some kind of glass, but the actual display itself looks to be made of some kind of crystal dust bonded to a sheet of thin, black, brittle metal. The metal sheet pretty much crumbles under the slightest touch, so I brush it away to get at what's behind it.
Past the mana display is exactly what I hoped for: wiring. There are dozens of thin metal wires attached to the back of the display, quickly disappearing into the wall. I grab a few of the wires and run my mana through them, trying to get a sense of where they lead, but all I get back is that they extend further than my mana does, and they run through the tower walls. Why didn’t I notice these wires before?
With my confusion growing, I shove my spatial perception through the hole I just made, instead of through the wall like I always do. Doing this, I am able to see that the inside of the wall is hollow and has some kind of enchantment running along the walls in a few places, also being fed mana from more wires leading down.
It seems like the outside of the tower walls are shielded against observation skills, but in a completely different way than dungeons are. Whatever is protecting this tower let me pass my spatial perception through it while fooling me into thinking it was solid stone.
I follow the wires with my spatial perception, hoping to find whatever has been powering this tower for the last few centuries. Eventually, after finding a few small crystals with a purpose I couldn’t figure out, I find a spot along the wires that I can no longer easily enter with my spatial perception. It doesn’t stop me completely like the dungeon did but pushes back against me every time I try to get past.
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I try to get to the same spot by following a few different wires, but eventually I am stopped by some kind of bubble that blocks me. The bubble is located below the floor of the basement, and if someone put up protections to keep wandering eyes out, it probably means there’s good loot inside. Well, if I can’t get past it, I’ll have to go through.
Taking a deep breath and sitting down, I spread out my spatial perception and scout the area around me, making sure no one is sneaking up on me. After I feel confident nothing is going to bother me, I follow the wires again, back to whatever is stopping me.
Whatever it is, it’s definitely mana-based, as I can feel a slight pulse from it that gets stronger when it stops me from going through. I can also feel some ‘vibrations’ from it, just like that dungeon trial had me do at the end of the first trial room. I sit and study the barrier for a while, poking and prodding it with my spatial senses, even creating a small portal next to it so I can send some of my mana at it.
It’s during one of these tests that I finally have some kind of breakthrough. By matching the frequency, which is what I call the mana vibrations, of my mana to that of the barrier, it allows it to slip right through. The only problem now is that the frequency of the barrier changes about twice every second, and once it changes, it cuts off any access I had to the inside.
I focus my mind as completely as I can, tuning out everything but my portal and the barrier, with its ever-changing frequencies. I start trying to match its frequencies with my mana, focusing my entire brain on the minute changes happening several times a second. A small headache starts forming as my frequency matching gets faster and faster. I start off slow, barely able to match once every few seconds, but faster and faster I improve, focusing only on matching this barrier.
The frequency changes, and I’m too slow, missing the window. So I try again. And again. And again. Until finally, my mana matches the barrier, and I’m able to keep up with the rate of change, mirroring it almost perfectly. I don’t even take a moment to gather myself before I start working again, afraid I might lose my current state of concentration.
I push my mana into the barrier, making sure to keep matching the frequency, while shaping it into a ring, making a small hole in the barrier. With my opening made, I immediately push my spatial perception through, mapping out the inside of the room.
The room is a small cube, maybe three feet to each side, with a small pedestal in the center. Leading up to the pedestal, from small holes all around the room, are thin metal wires humming with the mana that runs through them. On top of the pedestal is my prize, a mana crystal set into a housing that connects it to all of those wires.
Knowing I can't keep the barrier open forever, I have to work fast if I want to get that crystal out, as the barrier is trying very hard to repair itself. I start forming a second portal, putting even more strain on my mind, but as long as I can hold out for the next few seconds, I’ll be fine. My headache worsens. It feels like someone is pounding on my brain with sledgehammers, but eventually that second portal snaps open, and I allow everything but that to fade.
I feel the strain on my mind lift slightly as I no longer have to keep the barrier and two portals open. The current portal is stable, thankfully, and after a few more seconds of rest I enlarge it big enough for my arms to reach through.
I don’t know why the barrier stopped my spatial perception and not an active portal, but I think it’s because the barrier is designed to stop mana from passing through, and a stable portal circumvents that by creating a new passageway. I wonder if you could block an already open portal with the right kind of barrier? No more speculating. I need to focus.
With the portal open in front of me and my prize sitting right there, I get to work. I have no idea if I should power this thing down before I try to remove it, or even what to remove, as the pedestal itself seems to have a few smaller crystals embedded in it, all wired into the main crystal through the housing. With no better idea, and hopefully more of these to collect later if I fuck this one up too badly, I just start prying at where the housing connects to the pedestal with my crowbar.
After a little bit of damage to the housing and no alarms or anything going off, I decide that it’s probably not going to blow up, and a few minutes later I have the thing loose. A final yank pulls it free of the last few wires, and the remaining screens shut off, and I feel the barrier give out as well. Whatever was hiding the tower walls also turns off, meaning this crystal likely powered the entire tower.
Looking at the housing, it’s about the size of a baseball and made out of some kind of steel, I think, with the important parts made of some kind of mana-conductive metal. The housing has six holes evenly spaced out along the outside, revealing the crystal hiding inside. The crystal is bright yellow in color, and it’s glowing with mana, which it seems to be gathering more and more of as I sit here and observe it.
Is it some kind of mana collector? That would explain how the tower still has mana even centuries after being abandoned. Does it collect some kind of ambient mana? I need to sit down and study this thing better.
Deciding I have everything I want from this tower, I stand up and almost immediately fall over. My headache still rages from the pressure I put on my mind earlier, and my body feels weak, like I just ran a marathon or something. I walk out of the tower and head back, hoping Daniel and Corvax have had a good time hunting.