Seven Days

  It was the twenty-second day since I had been dragged into the Tower from the street outside my apartment, or November 18, 2023 by Earth reckoning. I woke wrapped in soft silk bedsheets on a mattress that somehow managed to be both yielding and firm, and large enough that it reminded me of the first apartment I had ever lived in on my own. The room was completely dark. The canopy around the bed had to be fully sealed for my recovery ability to function properly, and so not even a sliver of light made it through. Even so, I woke in a state of deep, pleasant warmth, the kind of comfort that sinks into your bones and makes you reluctant to move.

  My ability could restore damage and remove strain from awkward sleeping positions, but it could not give me the simple luxury of waking up rested and comfortable if I had not been comfortable to begin with. It had been a long time since that had been the case. This morning, though, it was. I lay there for a while, listening to my own breathing, feeling the weight of the blankets, appreciating the simple fact that nothing hurt.

  I was, however, very hungry.

  Whether I liked it or not, the first step in my long-term plan to kick off this training montage of advancement was not reading, or spellcasting, or arcane experimentation. It was logistics. I needed supplies. Perishables, mostly. My tower was impressive, comfortable, and magically robust, but it was not self-sustaining. At the very least, I needed food. I pushed myself out of bed, broke the seal of the canopy, and let light spill in from the room beyond. I packed my backpack, leaving behind anything that could be stored in the magical space inside it, called Chum, and warped to the Adventuring Guild in Starter Village.I had, clearly, not checked what time it was.

  I arrived in darkness with a loud, unmistakable crack of displaced air, which immediately prompted a shouted, “Who’s there! I am armed!” from Mrs. Xiang. I froze, hands raised, staff thankfully not in hand yet. It took only a few seconds to resolve the confusion, and she relaxed when she realized it was me, though she did not look pleased about the interruption.

  As it turned out, I had arrived about half an hour before dawn. I leaned against the counter and waited while the sky outside lightened, the village slowly waking. Before long, the guild hall began to fill with people looking for quests. The people here had done well surviving the first challenge, but this second one was less direct, less obviously structured. There was a sense of uncertainty in the air, and the Guild was already stepping into the role of giving people direction.

  Interest in joining the Guild had been strong. Much like in Checkpoint, the people of Starter Village had divided into two broad groups. There were those who wanted to keep fighting, leveling, and solving the mysteries of the Tower, and those who had reached their limit with violence and horror, and had instead taken on the roles of craftspeople, farmers, and service workers. Curiously, both groups came here looking for work.

  More than a dozen people had already signed up for my bridge-building quest. Mrs. Xiang had also created quests for scouting nearby monster nests, dungeons, and mapping the surrounding geography. Some of those had already been completed and turned in the night before, and the information was now being compiled and cross-referenced.

  I made a quick call to Clarence by orb. He told me that the Council had noticed my absence the previous night and had decided to start issuing patrol quests between known settlements. Apparently Mrs. Hoxley had reached Brandt’s camp and established a branch there as well. Only Octavia remained unaccounted for among the branch leaders.

  Mrs. Xiang wrote out the new patrol quests, along with material gathering and monster elimination jobs based on the scouting reports. She was busy enough that I found myself helping organize paperwork, sorting reports, and grouping quests by difficulty and urgency. It had been nearly a month since I had last made a spreadsheet, and doing this work on parchment felt archaic, but it scratched the same organizational itch. Still, my time was better spent elsewhere.

  Once the morning rush had settled, I left to gather supplies.

  I arranged purchases of simple, calorie-dense food. Flour, dried beans, fruit, cured game meat, anything that packed energy into minimal space and weight. By the time I was done, my backpack was heavy enough to strain my shoulders. Apparently Starter Village had taken several farming-related tokens at the end of the first challenge, and they had also made contact with a trader who accepted gold, probably one of the tourists.

  I then met with the people interested in helping with the bridge in Nothing. I paid them in gold. Enough people were doing the same now that prices were beginning to stabilize. Roughly speaking, one gold piece seemed to be worth a little more than a dollar. That still left me with a small fortune, and I did not hesitate to spend where it mattered.

  On the first day, there was little they could do beyond scouting the location and brainstorming solutions. The challenge was significant. I needed a bridge from Anna’s silver-tree park to my tower, a distance that took roughly twenty minutes to cross at a walking pace. On Earth, something like that would have been effectively impossible. Once we started thinking in terms of the Journal and magic, however, ideas began to form.

  By noon, I had taken two ropes across the chasm and hammered them into the floors of the respective slices of real-space in Nothing using iron spikes. Hammering them into the solid stones wasn’t hard, but there was a feeling in the back of my mind like being watched from an inch away. Nothing did not behave like a place that wanted to be anchored. I made a note that we would need adventurers as guards and arcane protectors for the workers. There were monsters in Nothing, and the work itself was lethally dangerous without precautions. Falling meant falling forever.

  I could help with my Invisible Barrier spell, but the entire point of hiring others was to free my time.

  That evening, I increased my Cooking skill to 3 while attempting to make something edible out of the supplies I had bought. The result was flatbread and a vaguely stew-like mixture of meat and beans. It was at least seasoned and edible. I devoured it anyway. I had not eaten in a full day. Still, I would have traded every comfort in my tower for a delivery from the Vietnamese place down the street from my old apartment.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  And then the real training began.

  I started by secretly infesting nearly everyone in Starter Village with Mind Worms for rank training. I hated the idea, but the spell would fail if the target was aware of it. I needed to spend an hour spying on others before the spell would rank up, and I figured that doing so during working hours meant I would at least avoid anything truly private.

  When I returned to the tower, I turned to the library. There were over five thousand titles, spanning subjects from calculus to fiction. I selected my first week’s reading, focusing on Arcane Theory and Medicine. My reading speed had increased noticeably, and while Occultis Umbrorum Novitae was a dense volume of over five hundred pages, I managed to finish it alongside a suspiciously slick and plastic-feeling Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology, 2022 edition that was very clearly from Earth.

  I reached level 5 in Arcane Theory by the third day. Biology followed at 4, and Medicine at 2. After discussing it with Chum, we agreed that Medicine was at least as much practical as theoretical. To accelerate it, I would need hands-on experience. Since I lost the skill learning boost from my Human ability after reaching level 5, I set aside Arcane Theory texts and began reading broadly and somewhat at random.

  Steel, Gods and Arcana was a history of interplanar interaction, beginning with the first recorded contact between two adjoining planes, Syritak and Oom, some two thousand relative years ago. It traced the development of the multiverse, the discovery of new planes, and the conflicts and alliances that followed. Reconciling this with my understanding of Earth’s universe and the Tower’s mechanics was difficult, but I learned enough to build a rough mental framework.

  This book was also the first place I encountered Xem’s name outside the Tower. Two hundred years ago, he had been recorded as an ambitious and heroic leader of a nation of highly skilled arcanists who pioneered inter-universal travel in their universe. The contrast between that figure and the megalomaniac psychopath who had trapped millions in a death dungeon was jarring.

  As my Biology and History skills reached 5, I turned to books on planes themselves. With Chum’s help, I learned that most universes were prime material. Vast, mostly empty, dotted with stars and occasional life-bearing worlds. They were categorized by natural magic levels and magical advancement. Type 4-4 universes represented the pinnacle, at least according to the author of the book I was reading. In these universes magic was freely available and self-sustaining- representing the first number in the categorization. And the magic had to be ordered into a Universal System by the arcanists of the universe. The System would usually be intractable via methods as varied as psycho-illusory interfaces to things resembling apps on something like Earth smart-phones. In many ways a 4-4 universe was like the Tower, but natural, much larger and almost always less cruel.

  Type 0-0 universes like Earth were rarer still, nearly impossible to detect magically and almost always uncontacted.

  High and Low planes followed different rules. Hell, heavens, Faerie realms. Immense places populated by beings capable of influencing other universes, but also unable to physically leave their home planes.

  A week into the work, several things happened.

  First, I finally got the damned Mind Worm upgrade. I shut off the remaining instances immediately, along with the low-grade self-loathing they had generated.

  Mind Worm: Psyche, Tier 2, Rank 2

  Below is the sigil for the Mind Worm spell of the Psyche school. This spell conjures an incorporeal, parasitic mental construct in the form of a carnivorous and congnivorous worm. The worm will do ongoing damage to the mana, hitpoints and the soul of the target, for as long as the target doesn’t pay direct attention to it. Most intelligent creatures are capable of destroying a mind worm once aware of it. When casting the spell you may choose to cast it as a probe instead of a ravenous worm. If chosen, instead of dealing damage the worm slowly infects the targets mind over a duration based on the targets hit points and mana. If the target notices the Mind Worm, the spell immediately ends, as with the normal casting of the spell. If the target does not notice it, you may perceive the world through the targets senses for 5 minutes. The 5 minutes do not need to be consecutive. After the 5 minutes are up, the target immediately notices the spell and recognizes you as its caster.

  Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 3:

  Spend 1/1 hours in the body of a different creature by using this spell

  Spell rank increased. Choose one of the following upgrade options:

  Sleeper Agent:

  When the worm is fully embedded in the spying variant of the spell, you may activate this ability. The target will attempt to resist the commands given by this spell with their Willpower attribute, and, if successful the spell will then end. Otherwise, you may choose one of the following commands which they will carry out incapable of controlling their body: Kill- they will attack the nearest living person with lethal intent, and continue on a rampage for 5 minutes. Return- they will sense your location and come to you by the most direct path possible, in which case the spell will end when they are within 6 feet of you. Freeze- they will not move for the next 10 minutes.

  Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 4:

  Kill 0/100 as a consequence of the casting of this spell

  Pseudo-Psychic Form:

  Give a near-material presence to the Worm. You no longer need to cast this spell directly at a target, and may instead create a transparent, semi-corporeal physical worm. The worm will remain in existence for 25 minutes or until it latches on to a host. It moves at a speed of 10 miles per hour and can pass through most non-magical objects. At your mental command it will seek out and infect a target it can reach.

  Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 4:

  Complete either the lethal or spying version of this spell without the target being aware 0/25 times.

  I went pale reading the options. I had access to some deeply unpleasant abilities already, but this was a new tier of awful. I chose the second option immediately, partly for utility and partly so I would never be tempted to use the first.

  I jumped and screamed when someone knocked on the front door, so used was I to the perfect silence and solitude of my tower.

  Staff in hand, I incanted Fus to summon my spellbook, I rushed to the entrance. When I opened it, I found Joan smiling at me. He was a tall, ruggedly handsome man leading the crew working on the bridge.

  “Alex,” he said, gesturing behind him. “Looks like we’re getting paid today after all. Come back to the village with us?”

  Beyond him, a rope bridge with a wooden plank floor stretched from my front door into the endless darkness of Nothing and nowhere.