When Nick had first laid eyes upon Alluria’s Magic Tower, he had been forced to look away. It was just too bright, too powerful for someone as sensitive as him.

  Over time, he was able to adjust his perception, reducing some of that overwhelming presence through effort. He eventually got used to it until it felt like the sound of the sea, a constant companion, yet not uncomfortable.

  As he pulled on the Tower’s conceptual weight to complete the forging of his focus, however, he had to bare his soul to it and couldn’t afford to dim the brightness, lest he miss some crucial part.

  Even though his spiritual form lacked true eyes, he still felt the need to cover them as the dimensional nexus fully opened to him.

  “Gah!” he shouted, but he didn’t shy away, pushing through all the pain and aches caused by merely trying to understand the Tower in all its entirety.

  This was as crucial a moment as tearing apart the demon’s essence and using it to counteract the excess divinity. If he couldn’t properly shape the mass of shimmering metal that now floated in the middle of the ritual circles, exuding enough power to cause ripples in the air, everything would be for naught, and he’d merely end up with an effective focus.

  Nick didn’t want that. He had spent months working to get here, ever since learning about the auction. Even more, if he were honest. From the moment Sashara decided to punish him and burn his wand, he knew he wanted something that could never be taken from him, no matter who tried.

  And this was the heart of that effort. If he could just capture the essence of the Tower and recreate it on a smaller scale, he would have something that far exceeded any other Work he had done, combined.

  The more he tried to understand its conceptual structure, the more he realized how crazy it was for such a thing to exist in the middle of a city.

  Nick wasn’t sure if the other Towers across the kingdom were the same, but if they were, it was no surprise that Berea had absorbed most of its neighbors and was controlling everyone else.

  The skill and power required to create something like this far exceeded what anyone living on Earth could have managed, even working together or using all the resources the last few clans and families had secretly stored away.

  It was simply overwhelming. The Tower was both a fixed point in space, connecting countless dimensions, and the strongest defense against intruders. In its shadow, nothing that was not intentionally called upon could get any closer. At the same time, the laws of reality became very unstable and wouldn’t allow anything larger than a demonic creature to approach.

  That, Nick realized, was why both times he had almost accidentally summoned a more powerful demon, he had gotten away with it. It wasn't luck, but rather the abominations’ own sense of self-preservation, which had warned them of the immense danger stepping closer to the Tower would pose.

  It was like…

  “An artificial dungeon core?” he muttered, still learning more from the etheric manifestation and pushing it into the focus. “No, it might have started like that, but it has evolved in a very different direction. Something akin to the crystallization of the dimensional limbo instead of the World’s excess power? But molded in a way to bind dimensional instability.”

  But if that were the case, then spatial magic should have been more difficult to perform indoors, not easy enough that even apprentices with an interest in the art could teleport.

  There was still something he was missing. One last tassel he needed to complete the puzzle and give his focus a perfect form to mold itself after.

  Deeper and deeper he looked, feeling his mystical sight weaken as the details blurred, but he was too close to stop now.

  All of a sudden, a presence surrounded him, as if it had always been there. Nick flinched back and tried to pull away, afraid he might have attracted Bluetear’s notice.

  He didn’t know if the Tower Master would scold him, but he couldn’t risk an unknown factor so close to finishing the ritual. With a heavy heart, he shut off his mystical sight and went to add the final touches to the focus, even if it meant leaving it slightly unfinished.

  However, his spiritual form stayed exactly where it was, ignoring his command to move, and panic started to set in.

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  He was caught in the grip of something so incomprehensibly powerful that control over his own soul was almost impossible. That wasn't something he could fix with a few carefully crafted spells, let alone what it would do to his ritual.

  Time didn’t quite flow normally in the dimensional shear that was the Tower’s shadow, but he couldn’t stay away too long, or the fragile magics could destabilize.

  “Fear not,” a voice echoed all around him, and through the haze of panic, Nick recognized it.

  With a strong act of will, he ruthlessly suppressed the emotions boiling inside him and focused on it, using it to pull himself together.

  It was not, as he’d feared, Bluetear’s voice, nor was it Tholm’s. Instead, it was that masculine voice he’d heard the first time when he took the elevator with Lasazar, and which he heard every time he needed to go to the basement floor.

  “Who are you?” He projected, though he already knew.

  “I am [The Crystal Light that Shields Humanity],” it replied, and with the sound, a rapid cascade of ideas flooded through him. Although it was too quick to grasp fully, it left him with a clear piece of knowledge.

  The one thing he’d overlooked was very simple in the end. The Tower was too complex an artifact to be completely lifeless, and over time, due to the unlimited power it held and the principles it was entrusted with, it had developed a conscience.

  It was alive.

  The revelation was so shocking that Nick couldn’t even find the strength to question it at first, but the Tower had other plans. Suddenly, he was back in the summoning chamber, and the focus he’d been shaping started to hum with a sound that felt both harmonious and impossible to hear in its entirety.

  “You will do well. I shall wait for the time we can greet each other again,” the voice spoke again, this time shifting to a more feminine tone, which he recognized once more from the elevator.

  Then, its presence disappeared, and Nick had no more time to think about what just happened because all three rituals he was running at the same time wobbled. He had to focus all his energy to keep them from collapsing, triggering a cascade failure that would erase him from existence.

  When he finally stabilized them enough to pull his attention away, the focus stopped humming and floated in the air, almost giving the sensation of expectation.

  Nick went to finish the forging process, trying to summon that fleeting understanding of the Tower he had felt, only to touch it and find it was already complete.

  The noticeable emptiness that used to be at its core, the lack of coherence, was now filled with something he recognized as similar, though not the same as the Tower’s presence.

  “You shall be the [Shard of Human Ambition],” he murmured, somehow not feeling the need to wonder where that name had come from.

  It felt perfectly fitting. It described the path that had brought him here so far, battling demons and gods alike, all to achieve more, and still paid tribute to the Tower, after which the staff was shaped.

  And it was a staff. Five feet long, made of pitch-black orichalcum with veins of multicolored crystal, and a pure white pearl at the top, encased by a cage of the same orichalcum.

  Something hummed back at him, connected to his soul in a way that even [Blasphemy] couldn’t interfere with. It resonated, forging or rather revealing a link that had already been there, and Nick knew he had succeeded in crafting something that could not be taken from him.

  The [Shard of Human Ambition] was as much a part of him as his mind was. Unless his soul were completely destroyed, it would come back to him even if taken away. It would serve him better than any other focus ever could, precisely because it was an extension of his magical skills and the path he had carved out for himself.

  As his hand wrapped around it, he felt an instinctive urge to slam its butt against the floor, and the last remnants of the instability from his brief lapse in composure vanished as the rituals came to a close, and a powerful light flashed.

  When Nick opened his eyes again, the floor was once more flawlessly smooth, as if untouched, and the only active magic was the one in his hands.

  That was when the flood of notifications hit. The System, apparently, had much to say about his deeds.

  The rush from the successful Feat would never get old. Nick had suspected the System would recognize it as such, but he hadn’t dared say it out loud, since just getting the staff would have been enough for him.

  “I’m not going to complain about the two extra levels, though,” he murmured, and felt a vague sense of amusement coming back from the Shard.

  That pulled his attention back to it, and he couldn’t help but smile a little. It was quite a striking piece to look at, and what he sensed from it was even more captivating.

  His mana was quite low compared to his usual levels, but the extra power he had just been granted arrived at the perfect moment for him to test something out before he had to leave and get ready for the field trip.

  He set out to craft a simple [Telekinetic Field], one of the most basic spells he had ever devised, and aimed it at the far side of the room where the couch and chairs were. Normally, he would have needed to control the lift, balance, and movement, while also considering the distance from which he was operating, giving the spell a bit more power to ensure it would work.

  This time, he didn’t even need to twitch his hand. The staff stayed in place and absorbed the tendril of mana he offered, letting it shape effortlessly, so much so that Nick almost didn’t notice when the furniture lifted all at once.

  There was no wobbling or doubt. He wanted it to rise, and it did.

  It was a simple spell. A relatively minor change compared to what he could do without it. But if the Shard could enhance magics he already mastered, he could only wonder what it would allow him to do with the more complex ones.

  That said, not everything about this entire experience was a success. Or at least, he shouldn’t simply walk out thinking he made no mistakes. Because if the Tower hadn’t been willing to lend its help, and if he hadn’t been protected by it from what he was pretty sure was at least a Lesser Demon, he would have died.

  The Shard warmed in his hands as if offering comfort, and he sighed, already feeling fond. “Yeah, I know. You will watch my back from now on.”

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