For what felt like a long time Laurence saw nothing but emptiness. He was all that there was, all that there could be. He just drifted in the void wondering what the point in this place was. After a moment, maybe an age, Laurence felt a prickling, then a slight pull, then a tug in a direction. He had nothing else to do so he followed the sensation. He had long since lost track of time at this point but after what could have been a minute, or an hour he saw a light and he headed towards it. The light turned out to be a door, just like the one in his house. The closer Laurence got to the door the more it consumed his vision, soon all he could see was the door and then he was through it.
On the other side was a monster. It looked like a butler with a terrier’s head, just over a meter in height, and while it was very snappily dressed it would have made most normal men extremely uncomfortable. For some reason it was holding a pocket watch and eyeing up Laurence as he came through the door.
“One hour, fourteen minutes and twenty-three seconds. Good”. The terrier put its watch away. “My name is Tony Longinex Lupe and I am the master of the first floor test room. Complete this floor and you can begin your climb as a challenger. Before any questions you might have I would like your name, age and where you came from please”.
Laurence was slightly taken aback. In his village dogs couldn’t talk for one thing, for another this was not what he was expecting on the other side of the door.
“Chop chop. I don’t have all cycle you know”.
“Err right”. Said the child. “My name is Laurence Absolution, I am seven years old today and I come from Ribec village”. He paused, and then said, “Can I ask questions now?”
“Oh happy birthday young sir! A member of that clan, eh? I understand why your time was so good. Yes you can ask questions, but please note that no matter what your test will begin tomorrow. You can take the test as often as you like but if you become too injured during your test you will immediately be returned to your place of origin”. Tony was very well spoken, everything he said came out clearly, quickly and in a slightly gruff voice.
“Oh, okay”. Laurence thought for a minute and then finally asked “Are you a man-dog or a dog-man?”
“What”. Tony replied. He had heard many questions in the time he had been presiding over the primary test room, but this was a first. Most people were shocked and confused about the place they were in, if not that then they were curious about the test coming up. No one had bothered to ask if he or any other of his kind were more man than dog or vice versa.
“Are you a man-dog or a dog-man?” Laurence repeated.
“Yes I heard you the first time. What I meant was why ask that?”
“Then why did you ask what? It seems silly to ask the wrong question because you’ll always get the wrong answer”.
Laurence had no idea how infuriating his questions could sometimes be, and coupled with his interest in everything he would often get side-tracked easily. If you were not prepared he could be a tough child to deal with.
“Fine then. Why did you ask the question?” Tony said, his patience very quickly running out with the odd child in front of him.
“Because I wanted to know the answer, silly. How many other people are here?” said Laurence, immediately following another train of thought.
The dog-man sighed, quickly moving on from Laurence’s first question. “There are currently over a hundred people attempting to become Challengers in this dimension but we have around one thousand entrants every week. Maybe one in fifty will pass to the first floor though”. Tony attempted to dissuade the child in front of him but he couldn’t do it. Laurence’s boundless curiosity simply meant that he wanted to know what forty-nine in fifty people would never see.
Laurence continued to interrogate Tony on everything from the inane to the profound as he was shown to the room he was allocated. Eventually Tony could take no more and said “Look. Tomorrow is your test, I have to get a few things ready for it. You are number two hundred and five, and I bid you farewell”. With that Tony walked off in disgust. It wasn’t that he disliked Laurence, but he could not deal with children. He had enough trouble dealing with his own pups. The only thing that could stand up to that child’s vexing talk is a mirror or a parrot, he thought as he went about his business.
The night went by uneventfully. It was the first time Laurence had not slept in his own bed in his memory, so he was quite excited. He saw books on a shelf in his room and looked through them. There were so many stories that he had so much choice in what he wanted to read. Eventually he picked out three at random, The Tale of Gudrun and Selene, The Fallen King and The Life of Maleus The Destroyer then stored the rest in his bag. Each story told a tale that was supposedly a true story about challengers of Babel. The stories varied in tone, but something stuck with Laurence. The Fallen King was an event that happened several thousand years ago, where a creature fell from a place only described as ‘on high’ and it took the form of a man with slit eyes. It sowed mistrust and wreaked destruction on anything that got in its way. Eventually three Ascendant Immortals joined forces and destroyed this being they came to call the Fallen Morning.
What piqued Laurence’s interest was that this ‘on high’ was a place that superseded Babel. Perhaps the tower was not the highest point in the universe, perhaps there was even more than Laurence thought. This idea got the young boy so excited he almost failed get to sleep. In the end however, he did fall asleep and the next day came around quickly.
That morning Tony brought all the prospective challengers to an odd stone room with several seats. There was enough space to fit around a thousand people in the room, but only enough seats for two hundred people. At the near end of the room was a large set of windows, with each window looking into a different place. Some showed forests, some showed deserts, and a couple were underwater. At the far end of the room there was a simple stairwell which Tony quickly walked in front of.
“Good day sirs and madams! As you should all know by now, my name is Tony, and I am your first test master. This test will form three parts, and the first two are a lesson”. The beastman surveyed those around him for unruly people who might try and ignore the tests, there were usually one or two and he liked to make an example of them. “You might be thinking why do we need a lesson to get into the tower? And quite simply that is why you need the lesson. One or two of you,” He glanced at Laurence, “will have some idea what to expect, but most of you will not. Now we are not cruel people in the tower, we will not send people who cannot climb the tower up it, but because of that we need to test you. So the first test is to be able to congeal mana.
“For those of you that don’t know, around us all is mana. It is the lifeblood of everything and feeds your soul, giving rise to the heroes of yore who had magical abilities and incredible strength. If you cannot congeal it within six months then you will never be able to. This region of space is specially designed to foster the ability in people, so if you fail, it is because you are a talentless hack that got through the gateway by sheer luck”.
At this point a large man in the back exploded out in rage “How dare you!” He shouted. “I am the Saderkahn of my people and unmatched in war! I don’t need to take these stupid classes”.
Tony smiled and simply said “Well I have no idea what a Saderkahn is, but if you think you are able enough then simply walk into the stairwell behind me and you can climb the tower”. He stepped aside and watched as the large man clenched his teeth and looked at the stairway. It felt like some sort of trick to everyone watching, but there was nothing between the man and the stairs. Finally he began walking towards the exit, picking up speed as he went out of fear that the strange beastman might try to stop him climbing. Tony pulled a pained face as the large man ran about four fifths of the way up the room. No one understood why until the hulking body of this braggart smashed into an invisible wall. There were several crunches and a gurgling scream as the man collapsed, his neck had impacted into his body and his jaw had been completely smashed. Most of the bones in his body were in a similar state as his jaw and it did not look like he could move.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we teach you how to use mana. In front of you there is an invisible wall that detects how much mana is circulating in a person’s body. If it is not at a certain level then you will simply not be able to pass through”.
Everyone looked at the pile of flesh and bone that used to be the large man and almost unanimously decided that they would take the lessons.
“Can someone please come and clear that mess up? I’d rather not do it myself,” Tony said, sighing as he waited for the people nearest the corpse to get up and begin moving the pile of flesh out of the room. Fortunately for them, as they finished getting the corpse into the hallway they were ushered back into the room and watched as the blood trail left behind melted into nothingness.
Once the body of the former giant had been cleared from the room by Tony’s slightly unwilling servants he began instructing them. “First things first, I should tell you all about the nature of Babel. The tower is a crucible that is designed to make people immortal, it is not the easiest route, nor the quickest, but it is the simplest. No one knows who made the tower originally, but whoever it was they were powerful. The tower is separated into fifty floors, with certain floors being ones that get you to a new stage of being. These floors are known as ‘rest floors’ and they do this by making the mana in your body transform into a different state. If you do not have enough mana or you are not a high enough stage then the jump to one of the rest floors could be fatal. This is why we train.
“I mentioned five stages earlier on. These stages are points that represent extreme jumps in physical and spiritual strength. The first stage, which almost all challengers start at, is the Earth stage. This stage is everyone’s starting point, and is what most people spend their lives trying to escape”.
“Does that mean we are going to have to get to the next stage to get through that door?” Said someone in the back. It was a thought held by most of the people in this odd stone room.
“Oh no”. Tony replied, and most people let out a sigh of relief. “One person in every million has a chance of becoming a Saint, so I doubt most of you will actually get to the first rest floor”. Around Laurence jaws dropped. It was one thing to be told to train to achieve power, but another to be told you would almost definitely fail. “Saints are men often spoken of in legends. They are at least ten times stronger than the average person in the Earth stage, will live for a maximum of two hundred years and have the ability to make their spirit take physical form. They are supermen, but they are only the second stage.
“The third stage, one that I am only mentioning so you are able to recognise and not offend them, is the Heaven stage. These men and women are ten times stronger than any Saint, they can live for up to four hundred years and gain the ability to fly. Legendary heroes cower in fear at the mere presence of a Heaven stage individual, so be careful who you affront when climbing the tower”.
The people in the room were gobsmacked. Tony had covered these godly beings like they were nothing serious, and only worth mentioning because of the weak people in front of him. He was truly blasé about the whole affair. After letting the room mull over the idea of these people for a minute he spoke again. “So, now you know what your aim in the tower is I can explain how you get the power to reach those peaks”. He paused and held up his small grey, fur covered hand and wisps of what looked like blue smoke began spinning around it. The smoke twirled and made various shapes then finally retreated back inside Tony. “That is mana. Controlling your own mana is a matter of will, but to produce it you first have to draw it from the world around you. There are three methods taught to people to suck in mana from their surroundings. First there is The Spiral Breath Formation, which is the method I will be teaching you, it is practised most often by the Absolution and Caesar clans, and is a painless and pure way to absorb energy. The Stolen Life Formation and the The Inner Flame Formation are the two other forms, however I do not practice these so cannot tell you much about them”.
The moment Tony mentioned The Inner Flame Formation it triggered a memory of Laurence’s. He remembered coming across that in his book and could remember it quite clearly. He immediately sat in the lotus position with both hands extended forward, with his palms up and breathed in through his nose. The air and energy collected in his chest at which point he forced it to reach the furthest corners in his body. Once the energy had reached his extremities he breathed all the air still in his lungs out explosively and quickly breathed in again. The mana contracted back to his diaphragm but more poured on top of it before it could escape.
Laurence could feel the energy in his body building up with every breath. His body devoured the mana with a voracity that could not be matched and held onto it for as long as it could. The process said to keep breathing like this until the ball of mana within sank to the level of the navel and formed a mana reservoir, so Laurence did. According to Tony, normally when one performed any breathing method they would take in around ten percent of the mana in the air but Laurence was absorbing in all of it. His body was like that of a starving man and it could not let go of any mana within its reach, giving Laurence a feeling of euphoria. The method continued, the ball of mana sinking lower and lower, until finally it congealed and began forming a shape. The red book said that the shape of the mana reservoir was the shape of a person’s spirit and that at each stage of growth the spirit would become more extravagant.
Laurence was very excited to see what the shape of his soul was. He had tried to perform the formation several times during his first reading of the book but every time it had failed. He was quite dejected at the time and eventually gave up, but now he realised there must have been another factor in him failing. With each breath he felt his spirit filing with mana and taking form. Breath after breath after breath the mana sank to his navel until finally the spirit completed its shape. It was that hammer on his red book, shaped like something between a war hammer and an oversized smith’s hammer and it looked like it was made of wrought iron. To Laurence it was wonderful, but then to him interesting things always were.
He slowly began opening his eyes and was surprised to see everyone looking at him. Tony looked happily at Laurence as if confirming something and then continued on with his lecture. “… And that is what happens when someone completely fills up their mana reservoir in one go. It usually only happens when you are used to a lot of mana and you’re forming your spirit or your reservoir is completely emptied. It doesn’t happen very often because in a battle people seeing where you are by the fact that your mana acting like a beacon is a problem”.
Laurence zoned out again as he noticed something going on with his spirit. He saw the spirit vibrate and then ignite into flames. From what he read in the book he had learned he had to fan the flames with mana or he knew they would go out and not come back. He used his strange breathing pattern again and felt the flames becoming more and more permanent, at the same time his spirit felt more and more solid. Finally he felt a qualitative change in both the flame and his hammer. Rather than being made of wrought iron it was now made of black steel, while the flames themselves were bright blue and producing electrical sparks. Laurence couldn’t help but feel excited because that flame meant he could refine metals and remove impurities from materials with ease.
The entire process of igniting his spirit took less than ten breaths but the moment he finished his eyes shone with an even greater vigour. He could feel the flow of mana in the area very clearly but wanted to know if he could see it, so he opened his eyes once again. This time not everyone was looking at him but the world itself seemed so much richer with colour. A couple of people were furtively glancing at him every-so-often but most people were paying attention to Tony instead.
“… Finally we come to the uses of mana”. He said as Laurence began paying attention again. “There are two major uses for magic amongst The Bookless, namely reinforcing your attacks and your defence. Magic as you might know it is the domain of the Book of Chaos, so if you wish to summon whirlwinds or fire lightning from your fingertips then affiliate yourself with an elemental clan. Most people just channel their mana into their muscles or their weapons to fight. It’s not as flashy as cutting someone up with the wind, but it’s far more practical”. Tony pulled a meter cube of stone out of thin air and said, “This is what happens when a person who has infused mana into their fists punches granite”. He then proceeded to take a single swing at the block. His fist did not even touch the block but forced a shock wave to impact the block instead. The moment the shock wave came into contact with the block there was a bang like a cannon blast and the entire block turned to dust.
“Of course this is with years of training”. Tony continued. “Simply put, mana allows your body to go above and beyond its normal capabilities, and with a fine grasp of control over it you can even fight against people and creatures of a higher stage than you”.
Laurence could see that Tony was lying. It was not a true lie, but a half-lie. Yes, Laurence had no doubt that infusing your body with mana would make you stronger, but that is not what Tony did to destroy the rock. Instead he had flung a super-fine net made of mana over the stone and torn it to pieces. It made Laurence wonder what else someone could do with mana if they had enough control, and how he could go about finding out.
The lesson eventually came to a close as Tony told people to try and use the formation that they had been taught. Most would not succeed, but perhaps one would do well enough to pass before the rest of the children came and scared off the older challengers. For the most part this stage of Babel was luck based. According to Eman Kent, a famous scholar in the tower, everyone had the capability to climb the tower, but most people did not have the perseverance to reach even the first stage. This reduced those who climbed the tower to one of three groups, the talented, the hard working and the lucky. Shortly before his death he also said “I would rather be lucky than good” before dying to a scorpion sting in his sleep. It was often claimed afterwards by his detractors that he was not one of the lucky ones.
Laurence walked up to Tony at the end of the lesson with a confused look on his face. For the last hour he had been trying to summon his spirit into being, something he knew was possible due to several references to it within the book of Creation, but he seemed to fail every time. No matter what he did he could not work out how to get his spirit’s physical form to appear, and eventually he caved.
“It’s actually a pretty simple solution for you,” Tony said. “There are several ways to go about it, but I assume you’re in a bit of a hurry. If you want to release your spirit from its spirit reservoir then all you have to do is give it a name. They can be pretty temperamental sometimes, so the best way to curtail them is by naming them. Then you have some modicum of control”.
Eventually he decided to call the hammer Jormungand after Gudrun’s spear in the Tale of Gudrun and Selene. He called its name and felt a rumble in the surrounding area as his spirit took form. It began as a facula in Laurence’s hand but quickly spread to form the long shaft and large head that he recognised contained his mana reservoir. Finally, as the hammer completed, it ignited with that strange sparking flame culminating at the blade-tip capping the shaft of the hammer. It was imposing, as tall as Laurence and as he began swinging it, it seemed weightless in his hands.
The young boy smiled as he looked at his spirit and said “I would like to take the test now”.
“Child, you know you have already succeeded, why put up the act?” Tony replied, walking back to the area near the door.
“Simple. I want to know if I can actually pass. There might be some reason why I fail, and if there is I want to see it”. Knowledge was everything to Laurence. All the things he did were done because he wanted to know something new, it was almost an addiction to him. He had to find out what was beyond that next hill or round that next turn compulsively. So like all the others who would come after him, he walked forward and passed through that odd point in space with the only difference being his mana reservoir filled up quicker.
Tony handed Laurence a small bag and held his right hand for a moment. Once he let go there was a sun-like pattern on his hands with the number 0 in the centre. “In that bag there are your rewards for completing the first test, a pointer stone that leads you to the location of the next test room and one copper shard with twenty stone shards. Shards are the currency on all floors of the tower, and so you get a sense of scale, 1 stone shard is worth about a loaf of low quality bread. A hundred stone shards to a single copper one, and the wage of the average farm-hand is four copper shards fifty stone every year”. The man-dog gestured to the stairs, “Now go. You have thirty days to get to the next testing room. If you fail then you will have to wait for sixty to take the test again”.
With that the small boy ran up the stairs and disappeared into Babel. As Tony walked away all he could do was wish the boy good luck and wonder if he would be caught up in the turbulence to come. He would need it.
