Chapter 147: Tower Among the Clouds
For a wizard, a tower serves as a home, sanctuary, research center, and fortress. A properly designed wizard's tower can rival the most advanced city defense systems in both complexity and strength.
A wizard's tower typically consists of a conical rock base and the wizard's dwelling atop it. Functionally, it can deal devastating area-of-effect damage to both ground and aerial targets. Comparable to Muggle defensive turrets, wizard towers excel at targeting clustered enemies. Unlike artillery, however, a wizard's tower has no blind spots and ensures all attacks land.
Such a bastion, doubling as a laboratory to store arcane materials, spellbooks, and magical artifacts, is indispensable. As a legendary wizard who once neared divinity, Augustus had built wizard towers across the empire. But in this world, his project wasn't a stationary tower—it was a floating fortress: a Tower Among the Clouds.
Using powerful elemental magic, Augustus planned to suspend the tower in the sky by solidifying the water vapor within clouds to support the structure's weight. From the ground, it would appear no different from any other cloud—except that it never moved. Such a mobile fortress offered significant advantages over a traditional wizard's tower. It could travel with the wizard, making it highly versatile. Enemies without the ability to fly would struggle to mount an attack, and the tower remained unaffected by ground-level conflicts. Most importantly, it provided a secluded space for uninterrupted research.
Augustus recalled the last Tower Among the Clouds that had accompanied him through countless adventures. It was the pinnacle of perfection, costing more than ten imperial palaces combined. Yet even comparing it to ordinary structures felt inadequate.
To construct such a tower, a wizard needed to be at least at the Archmage level due to the immense air elemental energy required. The magical arrays powering its systems and maintaining its stability demanded stringent standards.
Key materials for the tower included flying creatures and air elementals. Solidified clouds or other flying structures formed the foundation. The construction team needed 25 medium-sized flying creatures or 10 large ones, plus five air elementals of any size.
To expedite the process, Augustus purchased vast quantities of magical materials and ventured into southern England's shadowy forests to capture creatures like diricawls, hippogriffs, and sphinxes—large air-aligned beings. A third of the building time involved directing these creatures. Simultaneously, Augustus enlisted air elementals from the Elemental Plane to procure lightweight yet durable materials.
As a mobile fortress, the Tower Among the Clouds utilized wind elemental principles, enabling extraordinary speed. Its movement far outpaced Muggle aircraft, with a maximum velocity exceeding Mach 3.
In terms of design, the tower's corridors and rooms maintained consistent craftsmanship. Residential ceilings were all 10 feet high; raising them by 5 feet would increase costs by 25%, a waste Augustus deemed unnecessary.
For doors, Augustus used arcane airlocks. These mechanisms allowed seamless transitions between environments—such as moving from underwater to air—without flooding the lower levels. This feature meant the Tower Among the Clouds could serve as a land, air, or even underwater vehicle.
Other structural enhancements included thickened walls, iron gates, trapdoors, and arcane soundproofing. The latter employed padding in the walls to prevent sound transmission between rooms.
Beyond basic living quarters like bedrooms and kitchens, the tower housed specialized facilities for magical study. These included:
Arden (Alchemical Garden): A self-contained ecosystem for alchemy and botany. It used artificial sunlight powered by magical energy to support plants of diverse origins.
Blast Chambers, Libraries, Divination Rooms, Sealing Chambers, and Workshops: Large, costly spaces for various magical experiments and activities.
Confinement Chamber: Designed for imprisoning extraplanar entities and demons. It featured a mithril-embedded pentagram on the floor, 14 inches thick with 15 hardness and 7 HP. Breaking it required damaging part of the pentagram.
The Tower Among the Clouds adhered to the most rigorous interdimensional wizard tower standards. While some materials were difficult to source in the wizarding world, Augustus was confident his creation would soon stand as an architectural marvel.
By the end of the month, the construction was complete. The Tower Among the Clouds, a Level 6 Wizard's Tower, stood resplendent. Its crystalline exterior shimmered with deep purple hues, towering above the clouds like a deity overlooking the world. In an era devoid of faith, this celestial tower symbolized judgment from above, soaring through the heavens as if to command the earth.
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