Foundation of the Tower part 1

"I'm going to build a tower."

"...What?"

It's been two years since I met with Ellie. The situation in the world is getting worse. The ley lines are about the dry earlier than I thought. And this caused many calamities all around the world. There were heavy storms, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, floods, and many more.

These calamities in turn agitated everyone in this world. Especially the humans. They started another war just three months ago. And they are actually on the winning side for now. This war is also accelerating the death of the world. At this rate world will die in just about twenty years, thirty if we are lucky. You might be wondering what is the relation between these and my wanting to build a tower.

"You already know that the world is dying. At this rate, we don't have more than thirty years and that is only if we are lucky."

"Yeah... You already told me that. The world we live in is dying. It's hard to believe but... I can't deny it after everything you showed me."

Kitsunes and their descendants are sensitive to mana so when she saw the ley lines she soon figure out something was wrong. She is depressed ever since then. Seeing her depressed makes me sad. It's a feeling I haven't felt for a long time. I laughed and experience happiness with her and now seeing her sad makes me sad too. She is slowly awakening a side of me that is buried for a long time. I... don't want to give up on this side of myself and I don't want to see her sad too.

At this point, I start to think. What can I do to solve this? Can I save the world? Is there any way to stop the death of the world? I thought about it a lot. The ley lines were almost dried up. I can't find enough mana to fill the ley lines. But, can I fill it with something else? There is more than one energy in this world. There are mana, ki, soul power, furor, and such. Ki and soul power are quite different than mana. Furor is quite close to mana in both denseness and potency but finding enough is difficult.

Furor is energy produced in the bodies of every living being. It's an energy that nurtures the body and allows people to accomplish incredible things normally impossible. It's an energy that no one really knows much about it. Because compared to mana and the other energy types it's really minuscule amount of it produced in the body. But if somehow I collect large amounts of it... nope that won't really work. It's close but not the same as mana after all.

At that time another thought came to my mind. Is it really have to be one type of energy? Can't I combine more than one energy and use it as a substitute? I can create a magical formation that will help me to combine and stabilize the different energy types and make them into one more potent energy type. But there's one last question that remains. How can I collect enough energy? The most reliable source right now is the energies produced in the bodies of living beings. But to get enough of them I need to capture everyone in the world and held captive them for years.

An ordinary living being produces 1 point of ki or mana in a day, 1 point of furor in a week, and 1 point of soul power in a month. Well, the 1-point thing is just a figure of speech but I should build a system that would help me to calculate more accurately. Anyway as it can be seen collecting enough energy is really difficult but this is the case for ordinary living beings.

The rate of mana, ki, furor, or soul power produced in the body can be accelerated with training and gained experiences. It's like a level-up. People who slew monsters were getting stronger with time before the world's death begin. The natural monsters and beasts are extinct now and they are replaced with miasma. The monster born from miasma doesn't give any benefits. Well, it's exactly like level-up. But in the last decade, there s no one left who has powers or abilities exceeding the ordinary people. So it's really hard.

And at that point, I remembered something from my old world. A common thing that can be found in fantasy novels or video games. A dungeon. A place where everyone can go in, slay monsters, find treasures, and even level up. This would attract a lot of people to come in and the more they succeeded inside they would be getting stronger and they would produce more energy inside their bodies. And if I make it a tower it would be easier to notice and attract even more people inside.

"And it's like this. If we build this tower and attract enough adventurers we can actually make it work."

"Are you serious? Can you really save the world with this plan of yours?"

"...It's not for sure but there is no harm in trying. At the very least we can prolong the death of the world."

"That's amazing! We can save the world! Yes. Let's begin right away!"

And we begin the construction of the tower. For the location of the tower, I chose the east continent's center. Demi-Humans can produce and generate more energy with level-ups. This would be more beneficial in the short run. And with the war they are in, they would be desperate the gain power.

Building a simple tower was quite simple. With advanced earth magic, I build a tower with hundred floors. It was a colossal tower that could be seen from almost everywhere on the continent if I didn't cast illusion spells to hide it. I will hide it until we are done with the first floor. The first floor is one of the most important floors in the dungeon. It has to be fairly simple and easy enough to attract adventurers. Well, there wasn't any dungeon in this world so this will be the first-ever dungeon but they are just tiny details.

"How can I help, Arthur? I don't want to be a burden to you."

"You will never be a burden to me. But if you want to help me you can start by inscribing space extension formations on the ceiling and the ground. We will make this place wider. About... 500 km square would be enough for the first floor. You know what we will use it for the first ten floors and double it from the eleventh floor to the twenty-oneth floor. We will also make it a forest area. So the ceiling should be high and we can use illusions to make it look like the sky."

"...I see. Starting by setting the forest won't be better?"

"It would be destroyed when we apply for the space extension. Setting the forest later would be safer."

"I see. Then I will start with the formations."

Ellie is incredibly talented with magic. Her heritage might be the reason for it but she is even better than the other kitsune descendants I met before. I start teaching her sometime after we met and she quickly reached the level of A-rank Mage. I'm really lucky to have her. While she was busy with the setting space extension formations I was dealing with the monster problem.

To make the dungeon a dungeon you need to have monsters in it. And since the natural-born monsters are already extinct how could I get them? The miasma-born monsters are out of the question, why? Because there is an ecosystem in this world, a magical one. When you kill a creature you can absorb some of its mana or whatever energy it had. This is also the reason why the previous adventurers were able to naturally level up.

Because of all this, I needed to find a way to recreate the natural-born monsters. Lucky me, I already have a way. Well, it's more of an idea but I can make it possible. Remember the magic cores of the monsters I used to collect when I was an adventurer? Yeah. I will use them. You might be wondering how can I use them after devouring them. The magical cores are part of the body so they contain the DNA too. But unlike the individual DNA, they are the genetic code of the entire race. And since I devoured them, I also stored them inside my genetic codes. Yeah, at this point I can turn into every being I devoured the magic core of.

I extracted the goblin genetic code. If you are going to make a dungeon, you have to start with goblins.