Chapter 60

The floor of lights unlike its name was enshrouded in darkness. I could not see a thing at all. It was then as I stood there gazing around the room, I finally worked it out. Lights referred not to light itself but the magic lights.

I almost immediately entered the 'sense vision', as soon as I did. The room just lights up. There were lights everywhere. Red lights of fire, blue of the water, brown for the earth. Green for nature and black for darkness. There were even purple lights! Not that I knew what kind of magic there was used for though.

Now that I could sort of see, I began to slowly move through the room, admiring all of the different lights. As I slowly walked, I noticed very quickly how the red and black lights of fire and darkness respectively, began to gather around me. I guess it was due to my mana core attracting them to my presence.

As I admired this, I noticed that there was a weird gathering of blue lights in one corner of the room. It was like how the red and black lights were around me, so from this, there must be someone over there I thought.

Drawing my sword, I began to walk over slowly. Trying to make as little noise as possible so that they wouldn't know I was there.

Once I was within half a metre from the person I froze and listened to see if they were casting any spells or if they had noticed me. To my surprise, I heard some steady breathing. It sounded as if they were asleep!

Thanking the Gods for the blessing. I raised my sword to stab them.

Whoosh!

With a squelch, my sword went straight through what I think was their throat. They were no noise of the struggle, in fact apart from the now steady sound of a liquid which I assumed to be blood dripping to the floor, there was no noise at all now. They had stopped breathing…

After confirming that, I began to carry on moving through the room. Keeping an eye out for any more gathering of the lights. To my surprise I found none and as I reached the end of the room, I passed through another massive doorway onto another stairwell which spiralled up.

As I began to walk up the stairs, I smiled to myself. These so-called champions are easy to kill. How could one just be sleeping and not have their guard up? It is complete lunacy.

Unbeknownst to my thought, there was a simple reason why they didn't. No one had ever broken into the tower before and not just that, but most of the students were all descendants of nobles and had never really experienced any kind of life outside of the walls of their family estates or of the magic academy meaning that they were extremely gullible to the outside world and those who did know what the world was like were too arrogant to think that anyone would dare enter the academy with the intention to kill anyone.

Finally, I reached the top of the stairwell, what met me was yet another magic barrier and another illusionary person appeared before me, he looked similar to the one from before except this time he appeared to be more defined and a bit more detailed.

"You have passed through the hall of lights and seen all of the lights in this world. But are you worthy to wield them?"

It was another riddle. I stood there confused. This one was not as clear as the other before had been. It seemed like it had no answer. I gazed around seeing if there was any clue on the wall, first with my normal vision, then with my mana sense.

That's when I saw an unusual gathering of black and red lights above me. It almost seemed like they being dragged out of the previous and hall and forced above me. Then they began to spin around in a whirlpool with the tip pointing straight at me.

Feeling weird about this, I tried to take a few steps to get out of the way. But I couldn't move! The barrier had left the door and surrounded me! It was trapping me.

Then the figure's voice sounded out again…

"You will now be tested to see if you are worthy…"

Whatever was holding the whirlpool of light above me broke and they all started to descend straight towards me.

As the black and red lights reached me they first went into my head. It wasn't bad at first, just like a little headache. Then it got worse and worse and worse until the point where it more felt like my head was being bombarded and smacked over and over.

"Ahhhh," I screamed out in pain hoping that it would help ease the pain if only a little.

It didn't. Though at this point I couldn't stop screaming anyway. The pain was horrible. It wasn't just my body though..the lights were attacking everything, my mana core and it even felt like my soul itself was being attacked by it. Not that I knew how though. The pain had begun to feel so deep and horrible, I was starting to get nauseous and dots were starting to fill my vision.

At the moment in what felt like I was going to pass out, the pain just stopped. Then the barrier that was holding me up disappeared and I slumped to the floor. Barely conscious at this point.

I faintly heard the figure say something about I had passed the test, then it faded away.

I played on the floor for quite a while before finally feeling up to standing up again. Getting to my feet, I saw the door was wide open, it looked like a library. There were shelves upon shelves all filled with books.

I walked up to one, unlike what I expected they were not covered in the dust though. It looked like they were brand new and that they had only just been placed there. I pulled out one of the books in front of me at random.

It was a thick book, with a black cover. The title of it simply read Advanced Necromancy. It interested me slightly, as I opened it to read more I found inside it contained spells and techniques on how to use the art of necromancy which was interesting. It mentioned a lot of terms that I didn't understand though. I guess this was due to it being an advanced book, not just the basic one. Placing it back, I began to look around some more pulling out more and more books. I carried on doing this until I came across one simply called Basic Elemental Magic.

I opened it curious to see what it said.

Elemental magic is simple. It is just about using the elements. Many races have their version of this and more so humanity is beginning to develop in recent years the school of thought that each element had subclasses or ways of using the element. This is ultimately wrong and is just a way to classify mages easier. The true path of magic relies on one mana core and their ability to use their mana. It is about control.

I read more and more of it. It was completely different to everything that I had been told so far though as far as I knew no one else seemed to know of this path of using one mana, well it wasn't common knowledge. But this book made it seemed like it was common, as I reached the end, there was a small date inscription. I couldn't read much but it did mention something about the second age...The second age!

Then this would have been written probably as the magic towers began to form.. which means it is thousands of years old!

I looked at it for a few minutes wondering how the book was so well kept being so old. In the end, I just put it down to the ability of the tower and then placed it back where I had found it.

Then, I began to walk off, trying to find where the exit to the next floor was. This should be the third floor if I am correct, meaning that there should be around seven more rooms to pass through before I reach the tenth where something should be waiting for me, at least that's what the letter said anyway.

Walking around I never ran into any of the other champions, instead, I passed books upon books of magic theory and spell tomes which were probably filled to the brim with magic spells that had long been lost to time, but unlike what most people would probably do in my situation I did not stop to read and learn them but instead carried on walking to try and find the doorway do that I could carry on.

This was all due to the book on magic theory. One of the most impactful lines that I read simply said, "Magic can be taught yes, but one should only be taught the basic of spell crafting. To succeed in magic, you have to make the spells yourself as the lights, the mana reacts to everyone differently. So in a way when learning magic, one should only be guided and not taught."

It was an interesting idea and an idea that I planned to follow. It was at this point I finally found the way to the next stairwell.