Ascending the staircase after placing my attributes took longer than it should have. I was still reeling from the effects of my latest achievement when my feet stumbled their way to the tenth floor. My mana pool had expanded twice its normal size in an instant and even the long climb from floor nine hadn’t been long enough to clear my head. Tag was affected even worse, basically drunk on the new power at our disposal.

  It was like a helium balloon had been inflated in my brain, somehow making all of my thoughts as light as my body felt. Even though I could barely keep a thought together, I was well aware of the intoxication. I just couldn’t do anything about it. It took conscious effort to remain present in my body with so much magical energy flowing inside of it. Thankfully, each step higher cleared some of the delightful brain fog.

  If I hadn’t been in a precarious situation with dangerous enemies around every corner, I would have happily let myself lounge around in the drunken sensation. Instead, I forced myself to focus on the physical world around me while my mana settled inside my core. Tag began to take the full brunt of the feeling as I started inspecting the walls around me. Like the massive halls which made up each floor, these too had constant carvings all throughout the otherwise smooth stone.

  I kept myself present by tracing my fingers along the cold stone as I rose through the tower’s step. The seemingly random engraving was not as simple as I had originally thought. Each of the floors below had subtly different designs and now that I actually looked, I was pretty sure the staircases were the same. With my theory that these lines and patterns actually informed the appearance of the elementals on the floor, I looked at the etching on the staircase in a different light.

  I remembered the wavy design on the otherwise austere Sorehammer and the thematically similar ones on the Fan of Knives. Taking a look at the Jingu Bang, I confirmed that these same types of engravings were present on the staff in large amounts. It hadn’t been something I thought much about before, so I hadn’t checked, but it was immediately clear that the perfectly rough texture of the weapon in places was created in part by these carvings.

  “They’re enchantments,” I said with certainty. It was such an obvious answer that I almost felt sheepish when thinking about my crafting sessions in the past. How had I not seen these before? I was almost pulling my hair out over how oblivious I had been when another wave of euphoria from my mana pool washed through me. I was immediately at peace with myself.

  It was the mana.

  When I had been learning my first skills, I had learned that mana was not just the fuel for the magical abilities granted by the System. By using a little of the magical energy while performing a task, my speed or strength or reaction time had increased a small amount. Of course, the change in ability was nothing compared to once a skill was unlocked and put to use, but the effect was there. At this point, it was a constant in my daily life. When I wasn’t feeding the greedy Jingu Bang with all the mana it could take, I expended my mana regeneration passively.

  With more mana flowing through me than ever before, the effect was as pronounced as it had ever been. Even without Tag’s attention, my own brain power had been increased simply by proximity to so much of the strange magic inside myself. Connections I had not been able to make before began to link together with ease. Answers I had been uncertain of became rock solid facts.

  These carvings were the source of enchantments. In the halls, they acted like tuning forks and forced the mana inside to act a certain way which encouraged the formation of elementals. On the stairs, the enchantments were different. I could tell just by sight now that I knew to look. Before now, all of the disparate lines had seemed random but with mana as a guide, I could begin to pick apart the pattern. From within the Mind Palace, even Tag started to pull himself from his drunken feelings and pay attention.

  Although the journey from floor nine to floor ten was long, I couldn’t work out what the purpose of the enchantments in the walls of the staircase were for. My elemental tuning fork theory felt so correct I didn’t bother questioning it, but every answer I came up with for the staircases fell flat. Were they structural supports to hold up the immense size of the tower? Perhaps these enchantments were the source of the strange spatial anomalies within the halls themselves. They could even be like antennae for mana, drawing it into the tower for whatever reason.

  Possibly all of those, or none at all. I was leaning towards my last theory but it was still just a guess. I still didn’t have a solid answer for that question by the time I reached the top of the stairs and entered the tenth floor. What I did have, though, was a level of calm in my mana which allowed me to think straight. Concentrating on the magical questions had made the magic within easier to handle.

  Which was good because I had absolutely no time to think once my foot touched down into the tenth hall. Before I knew what was happening, the entire room seemed to flip on its axis. I fell through the air quickly, tumbling over myself with no way to stop until I slammed into the ceiling, which was now the floor. Trying to get my bearings, I looked around and saw that the tenth floor was smaller than the ones prior. After the ninth floor had been multiple miles long, my expectations were flipped on their head as much as I was. Instead of a gargantuan arena, the tenth floor was about the size of a large supermarket.

  I decided, however, that the smaller room was not a good thing at all as I looked down/up at the mini-boss below/above me. The room continued to spin and I was forced to circle the creature hovering in the centre of the space. Looking like a mixture between a cloud and a black hole, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Even after I inspected the thing, I was still unsure.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Mini-Boss - Space Elemental - Level 33

  As far as appearance, it was hard to even tell. My vision slipped away from the creature no matter what I tried. Even calling it a creature felt incorrect. It was like being in the room with an MC Escher painting come to life. Instead of recognisable features, it was a being of angles and dimensions. It didn’t have fur, or a carapace, or a face. It was as magical a being as I had ever seen. I couldn’t decide whether I hated it or I loved it.

  Not only was it the weirdest looking enemy I had ever seen, it was also slightly weaker than I expected. Or rather, it’s level was lower. In terms of strength, I had no doubt this would be one of my toughest fights yet. A quick look at my quest for the tower said I had defeated four out of five guardians, with this one clearly being the last. Despite that, I didn’t want to attack right away. I was already caught in the creature’s orbit somewhat and the quality of the mana around it was startling.

  The Space Elemental sat right in the centre of the room, seemingly unbothered by my arrival. I walked in time with the rotation of the small hall, inspecting the enchantments on the walls. I still didn’t know enough to parse them apart but the designs in this room specifically were different to all the others. While there were differences between the room with the lightning elemental and the storm elemental, for example, they weren’t that disparate. It was like everything up to now had been created by one artist and this final enemy was someone else’s work entirely.

  After five minutes with no change other than my position in the room, I shrugged. If the Space Elemental wasn’t going to make the first move then I would have to. Reaching out to the waiting magic within, I gasped as I released my tight control and let myself fully experience the flow. Energy flooded into every skill with an entire river of power lying in wait to fill them anew. It was almost difficult to activate my skills in the correct order.

  First was King’s Training. Alongside the Jingu Bang, the skill and weapon both drank in half of my mana regeneration. As the skill gathered some steam, I felt the guiding hands of the System helping to contain my unwieldy mana. I had originally only thought of King’s Training as a way to make myself a more competent melee fighter, but that was reductive. While the skill required the use of the Jingu Bang, it was not limited to teaching me only physical combat.

  Skill - King’s Training (Epic)

  The previous wielder of your weapon underwent a grand journey with it. While wielding the Jingu Bang, for a large mana cost, the techniques and talents of the previous wielder are imprinted upon the bearer.

  The staff itself was a reference to Journey to the West, though I supposed it was possibly the other way around. The possibility that human experience had been coloured by the existence of The Tree before we had connected was one I had considered a few times. Whether the System drew from human consciousness or vice versa didn’t matter. As far as the Jingu Bang was concerned, I wasn’t sure whether it had truly been owned by the Monkey King of the story, but it worked in the same ways.

  Not just a brilliant fighter, the Monkey King had also been a talented magician. I felt the skill drawing on that history, imagined or not, as it taught me how to properly handle my growing mana. As I wove the energy into my other skills, my previous level of control soon returned to me. The air began to shake as dozens of Magic Missiles popped into being around me.

  Each glittering amber projectile carried ten mana, and within seconds I had crafted thirty of them. Ten mana was a stable limit, though I could technically create a Magic Missile using as many mana units as my Power attribute. More than ten mana and the bolts became more powerful, but less effective at actually hitting. Fat with mana, they moved slower and were much easier to disrupt en route.

  These missiles wouldn’t have a problem, but they were honestly just a test. I felt myself get a little giddy at the idea of using three hundred mana as an opening salvo, with more than double that still in the tank. My first fights had been desperate battles juggling a mere twenty five mana. I now had twenty times that. I hope you’re as strong as you look, I begged the Space Elemental mentally. It did not respond to my thoughts, nor the gathering of power in one part of its room.

  I held onto the swarm of Magic Missiles for as long as I could, allowing the free half of my mana regeneration to recover as much of my energy as possible. I fought against the growing mental strain until it started to actually hurt before finally releasing the opening barrage. Shaking off the headache while the missiles streaked through the small room, the last remaining tower guardian finally reacted.

  “No fucking w-” While I didn’t finish my complaint, I did manage to throw up a Mana Barrier in defence before my own attacks crashed into me. I had barely been able to react as the Magic Missiles I had been expecting to get blocked instead seemed to weave around the Space Elemental before picking up speed and immediately launching back at me. Most of the mana I recovered holding onto the missiles had been eaten by their return.

  I smiled wide. It really would have been a shame if that simple attack had been enough. It was no wonder the Space Elemental hadn’t cared about my preparations. The weight of all my clothing increased as the mana in the room turned aggressive towards me. Before, it had been passive and distracting. Now I had the Space Elemental’s attention, it was actively hindering me.

  “Good,” I shouted aloud, letting my mana run wild and pushing back the influence of what might be the final mini-boss of the dungeon, “make this interesting for me.”