Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

With the third floor finished they stopped to rest before going to the next. There'd be no break between the fourth and fifth ones, same as any of the affinitied towers, and just as importantly, that was the stage that affinitied magics would be blocked as well. While they hadn't come into play too much in the first floors, it was still a loss that would up the coming challenge and with no way to know what was still left to face, they needed a chance to recuperate.

Ben cooked food for the rest of them as they sat around, getting their bearings and emotionally preparing the best they could. Nobody suggested leaving to just claim the blessing and be done with it, by that point in both the tower and the invasion, they were all too invested in getting the strength they could for what was still to come and eventually, they went to sleep.

Or at least the rest of them did. Ben alone stayed up with his thoughts, feeling his mythril heart beating in his chest as he reflected on the floors so far and just how far he'd come.

They'd been possible, all three of them, to a point that he was confident that he could have done them alone if he had to. Barring his injury at the very beginning, he'd come far. He'd reached a point with his skills that left him feeling genuinely powerful. When taking on a place the gods had designed to challenge mortals, he was able to come out on top.

Looking at his hands as he sat down, it was easy to see the signs of his efforts. Calluses and a few healed cuts and burns from all of the ways he'd craft and what wasn't so easily reflected but still showed its proof in the form of the bands on his arms that were training his mana and vitality any time he put them on. He'd come far in the world. No longer was he the boy that could be ignored for something better. He was skilled in his craft and powerful in both magic and attributes enough that countries the world over would be happy to take him in if he'd only offer but still, it wasn't enough.

Maybe he already had a world-changing amount of skill, he'd proven as much with any number of inventions he'd made, but he couldn't say the same for power. He wanted to take on a god like no other but felt no closer to awakening any of his abilities and as high as his attributes had been growing even after all of the changes to himself, it still didn't feel like enough.

But all I can do is keep going. He sighed. Keep going and keep growing. When this is done I'll be a contender for my enchanting as well and I'll have another tower blessing to my name and it's only going to be more powerful thanks to my modifier compatibility, and then once this is done I'll take a few days and then go to craftsmans' tower and after that make an attempt to awaken connect and if doing that doesn't kill me I'll figure out how to awaken sacrilege from there and… And then maybe, when this is all done, training and the war and everything, if I live, I'll be able to take a nice little break. Doesn't that sound like a sweet little thought?

…Yeah, that's too far away to even dream about. I need to worry about finding other ways to get stronger first and then I can worry about the rest after. I'm replacing my heart as soon as I get out of here so we'll see how that goes and beyond that… Mmh, I'm still finishing my jobs pretty quick, even with the gods getting in the way of me. Maybe I should strain myself just a little more? I've been taking it easy since they already blocked me once but it gets easier every time my soul source and soul affinity grow, and then if I do awaken one of my skills to the third tier, that will grow my attributes enough that I'll unlock the king jobs for my mana and stamina at the very least. Hell, awaken two skills and it will get me pretty close to getting those jobs for vitality and strength too and if I modify my soul after awakening my connect and sacrilege that should be enough to push me into unlocking them so I'm going to be getting more fantastic bonuses to me attributes, and other than that… Well, I'll figure it out as I go.

There were always ways to grow more, to push oneself just a bit farther and pull just a bit of extra from himself or the system to reap what benefits they'd yield, all that was left was finding them but with the bit of time he had left before it was time to take on the last floor he forced himself to retreat into his mind for what little rest he could get.

"Is everyone ready?" Vasta asked, her hand already on the door, ready to go through and just waiting for confirmation from the others for that final push with Amy pulling out a spear from her ring since the magic storing her weapons would soon be blocked off while Ben confirmed everyone had a few potions before finally giving the nods she wanted. "Alright then, let's finish this."

The door to the second-last floor opened and with only a few steps they were all through, ready for the scene beyond and getting nothing but fog, a thick wall of it obscuring their vision and making it hard to see even the others around them. Anything more than a few meters was practically impossible, even if it was enough to make them aware that the thing they were on had a distinct edge.

A platform maybe five meters across and square in shape, they had no way of knowing what was below or beyond it as it stood, leaving them on an island of uncertainty.

"Oh man, I really hope this isn't going to be a combat floor," Jake muttered, getting Ben to respond.

"Whatever it is, we're on a timer again," He told them as he looked up to the sky, with three hours clearly marked and being bright enough to pierce through the fog around them, acting as their sole source of light. "What are we thinking here, a-"

His words were cut off, stopped as he felt the floor beneath them shift, not enough to throw them off but gently lifting and falling, making them all aware that however slight, they were all moving on it with whatever danger that might imply yet to be seen.

"...I believe, until we get reason to assume otherwise, that we should be treating this floor as one where the point is to find the exit," Vasta suggested. "With nothing else to go on and nothing obviously attempting to kill us yet, it's our best option for the time being, at least until we find something to change that assumption."

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"Alright then, where do we start?" Amy asked.

"Dealing with the fog. Thera, would you be able to try and clear this away the best you can for us to let us get a bit more vision?"

"Yeah, I can try."

Similar to the last floor, Thera made a barrier around them but this time caused it to expand, pushing the fog around them farther and farther away to give a greater view of their surroundings as the environment was slowly revealed, showing that beyond their own platform were more all around them, the same large squares, all of them gently swaying up and down in a way that revealed the depth of each one, raising and lowering meters each time but never enough to see their bottoms, at least from that vantage point. With more of the scene revealed, Ben walked to the edge of the one they were on and looked down, seeing nothing but a dark pit that went on endlessly and revealed it was giant cubes they were floating on through the void, leaving him to sigh.

"No matter where I go, I always see his face."

The comment was ignored, with Vasta instead focused on Thera.

"Are you going to be able to keep this barrier up?"

"Yeah, if nothing comes for us then this much is honestly easy."

"Think you'll be able to multitask then?"

"Probably, what do you have in mind?"

"If we are looking for the exit then we need to start moving. It would be a pain to get around a place like this usually with the way it looks like it operates but if you can carry us all while both keeping the fog away while having the platforms visible, Jake and I can focus on our clairvoyance to search out the areas out of sight for the exit."

"Alright, yeah, I can do that."

"Good, in that case, no time to waste. Go straight ahead. Jake, you search the left while I search the right and hopefully this won't be too long."

With orders given they began to move, the world passing by under their feet as Thera carried them, both Ben and Amy having nothing to do while the others worked. As minutes passed by it became more and more clear that there were no attacks coming for them, what they'd found was what they'd got. An endless sea of platforms with the only thing missing being the way out.

"God, I hate feeling like dead weight," Amy muttered. "This entire tower's been floors I couldn't help with."

"Really? Man, I love it. Nothing better than an easy time."

"Yeah, but you've played your part plenty already. All I've been doing is been getting carried along," She sighed. "Feels like I've had to do that in a lot of the towers."

"And is that a bad thing?"

"I mean, I'm now a contender for my augmentation. I'd kind of feel a lot better if I'd actually earned it."

"Who says you haven't? Towers are about teamwork as much as anything else, right? You can never know what you're going to face so there's always a chance someone's going to be doing a lot less than others, that's just life. Getting to the top means you've earned it."

"Mmh, easy to say when you've actually helped in all of the towers you've been to."

"Me?" He laughed. "Yeah, sure, I've played my parts for this one and when we did the earth tower together but you want to know my masterful plan when taking on the life tower before? Leave it all to Thera and get her to carry us through. Well, also cheating but that part is less important because it didn't work at the time. And then for the dark tower, to make things even easier you wanna know the best bit of help I contributed? I realized the gods hadn't banned the great spirits from participating so I got Fune, the dark spirit, to go in with us. My greatest strength is being willing to cheat, that's it. So what has you so self-conscious about this?"
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"...You know me and Jake are supposed to be trying to get to the third tier before the next wave, right?"

"Yeah, and you've even got access to a couple soul mages to help. I'm sure you can manage."

"Except how the hell am I supposed to get through that barrier when I've barely leveled any of my skills outside of what I've been doing in the tower? I haven't exactly been growing through effort."

"God, I'm so incredibly jealous."

"I'm being serious."

"So am I. Still, not to put too fine a point on it but I can see your skills, I know you've been raising some of them on your own."

"My first-tier ones, sure, not the ones that actually matter. And actually, a lot of that is going to be because of Yuzu and you, I got a lot of levels both times you helped me go through my jobs."

"Okay, but I can see your combat and your non-affinitied augmentation are both at their third level and I know you haven't been getting them from the towers."

"No, I've been getting them from having a soul mage at my beck and call along with all of the blessings I've been given for basically doing nothing too," She sighed, holding up a hand before he could say anything else. "And I know I wouldn't have gotten them if I hadn't been properly training for them and improving but it's not really the same."

"Alright, well whether you've been dead weight or not, there's one easy way to absolutely show you've earned your skills, no matter how you got there."

"I kind of doubt it."

"No, there absolutely is. Succeed and reach the third tier. Anyone that gets there deserves it."

"I think you missed the part where I have a bunch of blessings and a soul mage to help me."

"Yeah, and it's still a practically impossible goal," He shrugged. "Look at me, I've been a contender for years and I still haven't awakened my sacrilege. Getting there is hard."

"...Should you be trying to awaken your sacrilege?"

"Are you particularly religious?"

"We live on a planet with hundreds of very real gods and… Wait, you're still a fucking apostle, that should really be my main point!"

"Ha, you got me there but it's fine. Well, not fine fine, a hell of a lot of them up there don't want me succeeding and have shown they're more than willing to get in my way to keep it from happening, even if they typically get in trouble for it after but the only one I need to care about seems cool with it. Well, maybe cool with it is a bit of a stretch but I'd at least say Myriad has come to terms with it."

"...That doesn't sound like you should actually be doing it."

"Sadly, I can't escape my roots, coming from a reality without gods of its own, at least as far as I know. The agnosticism within me is still strong. But we also got off course. You feel like you're not doing enough? You still have warriors' tower to take on, you'll be able to fight to your heart's content there to make up for it I'm sure. And if you feel like you don't deserve the strength you've got then work until you do, nobody on the planet is going to call you out so long as you can play your part killing demons and saving lives."

"Mmh, I guess…"

The conversation didn't actually help her but getting the feelings off her chest was nice enough and with nothing either of them could do in that moment the two let themselves be carried on as the search continued as the minutes kept passing by.