Zenith’s Tower - Chapter 3

As his sight began to return, Ellis could see he was in another stone room that was larger than the room he had just been in and it had three long halls branching out on three sides of the room. The last side of the room was to his back. He turned around to see a broken stone pedestal with an old wooden chest on it that looked as though it would fall apart if so much as breathed on it. Ellis walked over to the chest warily hoping that whatever was inside might help him. However, he didn’t have much faith in the old, rotten looking chest. After struggling with the rusted latch, he managed to break the top off the wooden chest sending dust everywhere. Ellis coughed as he inhaled the dust and waved his hand to clear the dust around the chest before peering into it.

Inside he could see an old dull looking dagger, a partially broken wooden plank shield, two bottles of odd-looking liquid, a small satchel, and a tattered dark blue book with a symbol on the front.

Great! I’m thrown into a dungeon with a fucking butter knife, a broken plank shield, some weird fluids, and a book! I’ll definitely be able to stay alive with all this great loot! Thanks, Tower God.

Ellis rolled his eyes and threw himself to the ground in frustration. He poured the contents of the satchel out onto the ground in front of him searching for something that would help him survive.

Plop!

Two items fell to the ground in front of him. One looked like a water skin and the other was a bundle of white cloth.

I can use the cloth as bandages if I need to.

Ellis inspected the cloth before setting it aside. He then picked up the waterskin and squished it in his hands.

It’s full, but what’s inside?

Paranoid, Ellis uncorked the waterskin and poured out a few drops into his hand. It was cold, clear, and didn’t have any odd scent. So from what he could tell it was water. Ellis touched his tongue to one of the drops on his hand. It didn’t have a weird taste. He then took a swig of water from the waterskin and swished it around in his mouth before swallowing.

Yep, its water. Hopefully, there’s nothing wrong with it. It isn’t much, but at least it’s something useful. I don’t know how long I’ll be here and there isn’t a lot of water, so I need to make sure I ration it.

Ellis corked the waterskin up and set it aside.

He then turned to the tattered book in hopes that it would have some amazing content that could help him get out of this place. He opened the book and found pages upon pages of the symbols Ellis kept seeing. Flipping through the book he found pictures of various things. The pictures seemed to describe something inside of the body and how to shoot it out of you. After studying the diagrams, Ellis could guess what some of the symbols meant and was beginning to decipher parts of the book.

Flash!

The TowerCard in Ellis’s chest flashed brightly, startling him. Ellis set down the book and called out his TowerCard to figure out what the bright flash was about.

Name: Ellis Ryne

Level: 1

Age: 17

Race: Human

HP:10/10

AP:5/5

VIT:3 END:5

AGI:5 STR:4

DEX:4 INT:3

WIS:2 RES:2

DEF:3 LUC:6

Active Skills:

Passive Skills:

Language Comprehension LV. 1

Language Comprehension? Did I get that because I was deciphering the book?

Confused, Ellis put his TowerCard away and picked up the book again, only this time when he looked at the symbols, they made more sense. After examining the book carefully a second time, with his new skill Ellis could read some of the smaller sentences with relative ease. Ellis read the first sentence on the first page of the book out loud.

“How to focus the anima in your body into a concentrated stream and emit it out of your hand as a lightning bolt.”

Ellis stared at the book processing what he just read before he jumped to his feet and yelled out in excitement.

“MAGIC?!”

Ellis analyzed the tattered dark blue book in his hands thoroughly studying all its contents.

The books diagrams, descriptions, and information all related to the lightning spell. The diagrams seemed to show how the anima interacted with the body and where they originated. Everyone had a sort of anima core in their chest where anima was circulated from. The core would refill itself after resting and would grow like a muscle, the more it was used the bigger it got. A bigger anima core would mean more anima could be circulated and used. There were some other diagrams, describing various concepts but Ellis couldn’t wrap his head around what they meant. The descriptions held the most importance to Ellis; they described how to use the anima in one’s body.

First, one had to feel the anima running through their body and then somehow will it to the part of the body that they wanted to send out the anima through. After this was achieved, they would have to release all the gathered anima outside of their body in a consistent and concentrated stream of pure energy which would create the lightning bolt. The key was visualizing how the anima would look gathering and shooting out of him.

Ellis reread the book multiple times over, absorbing everything he could and committing it to memory. There were still sections of the book he didn’t understand, like something about overuse but he skipped over those parts hoping that he could figure them out with trial and error. After a few hours, he decided he’d learned enough from the book and was going to try to put it into practice.

He closed his eyes and practiced on trying to feel the anima in his body, which was a lot easier said than done. After multiple attempts, Ellis started to feel a slight warmth in his chest that grew stronger and stronger the more he concentrated on it. As soon as he opened his eyes the feeling slowly got weaker until it vanished. Opening his eyes created more distractions for him which made it more difficult to sense the anima in his body and lock onto it. Ellis spent a few hours learning the feeling of his anima and gradually was able to sense it even when his eyes were open with some effort.

Alright, I can at least feel the magic core in my body. That was the easy part. Now, I’m going to have to try to somehow move my body while sensing it.

Ellis concentrated on his anima and the warmth in his chest grew. Slowly, Ellis moved his left arm and the warmth dissipated quickly. He tried again. Same thing.

This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

After practicing that for a couple of hours, Ellis was able to walk around and make simple movements while still feeling his anima core, but no matter how much he tried, if he made any complex moves such as jumping or moving both arms at the same time, he would lose the feeling of warmth in his chest.

I guess this will have to do for now.

Now comes the hard part. Somehow, I’m going to have to make that warm feeling move from my chest across my body to a place I can visualize it spewing out from. My finger seems like the best bet because it’ll be in a small concentrated area and it’s easy to visualize something shooting out from it like a gun.

Ellis closed his eyes and willed the warmth in his chest to move toward his right arm, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried again but to no avail.

Starting to feel super tired Ellis decided to take a break and drink a little bit of water.

Ellis opened the satchel and took out the leather bag of water from the satchel and took a few gulps. As he drank, some of the water spilled from his mouth and flowed down his chest. Ellis watched as the water trickled down him when suddenly an idea popped into his mind.

What if I picture the anima as water and visualize it flowing through my body like a steady stream to its destination?

Ellis sprang up and made his way to the center of the room. He cleared his mind and coerced the anima to flow inside his body like running water toward his finger. Slowly, the anima core started to drain and flow toward his fingertip. After a minute or two, his core had been completely drained and all the anima swelled in his pointer finger. Ellis pictured the anima blasting out of his finger in a focused jet stream.

ZAP!

A small flash of electricity shot out from Ellis’s fingertip, scorching the ground in front of him.

“Yes! I did i-…”

Ellis shouted out loud before his vision became blurry and he toppled over.

Ellis woke up in a daze not sure if a few seconds had gone by or a few days. He sat up and looked around him. He saw the book lying on the ground next to him and remembered what had happened.

I probably shouldn’t use up all my anima at once like that again. I bet that’s one of the side effects the book mentions that I didn’t understand.

Ellis held his hand to his chest and called for his TowerCard.

Name: Ellis Ryne

Level: 1

Age: 17

Gender: Male

HP:10/10

AP:6/6

VIT:3 END:5

AGI:5 STR:4

DEX:4 INT:3

WIS:2 RES:2

DEF:3 LUC:6

Active Skills:

Spark LV. 1

Passive Skills: Wuxiaworld for visiting.

Language Comprehension LV. 2

My max anima increased by one, but it’s full so I must have been out for a while. I’m going to have to keep increasing it for it to be useful. There’s a new active skill too. Sparks? I guess Sparks is the inferior version of lightning bolt.

Ellis decided that he needed more practice with anima if he was going to use it. It would be a disaster if he used it and passed out in a dangerous situation. He practiced using various amounts of anima for the lightning bolt spell in different ways for a couple more hours before he was somewhat satisfied with the results.

My anima has increased by quite a bit but I’m still not able to shoot a lightning bolt like the one described in the book. I can manage a fairly bright explosion of light if I let my anima explode out of my hand that can shock things if I touch them. I’ve also learned how to shoot a thin spark, but I can’t control where it goes after it leaves my hand.

Name: Ellis Ryne

Level: 1

Age: 17

Gender: Male

HP:10/10

AP:8/14

VIT:3 END:5

AGI:5 STR:4

DEX:4 INT:4

WIS:2 RES:2

DEF:3 LUC:6

Active Skills:

Spark LV. 2

Electric Flash LV. 1

Passive Skills:

Language Comprehension LV. 2

After looking over the rest of the stuff he had, Ellis decided to sharpen his dull blade as best he could on the stone floor. After an hour of sharpening, the blade was as sharp as he could get it and that wasn’t saying much.

Well, that’s as good as this piece of shit is gonna get. I hope it helps at least a little bit against the so-called ‘monsters’ in here.

With that Ellis gathered what little he had and began to prepare for whatever was to come. He filled the satchel with the two strange liquids, the water skin, and the magic book. Then pulled the satchel over his shoulder. He still didn’t know what the mysterious liquids were, but he could figure it out some other time. In his right hand was the dagger and in the left the cracked wooden shield. In front of him were the three different tunnels.

Alright, I’m ready to get out of here. Which tunnel should I choose though?

Ellis walked up to the middle tunnel entrance and saw that there was a weird carving that looked like a completely different language than from the inside of the book all around the door entrance.

I wonder what all of this means…

Ellis brushed his hands against the carvings around the entrance and a strong blast of cold air from the middle hallway chilled his bones. The clothes he was wearing made it a bit more tolerable, as the warming effect kicked in heating him up.

I might freeze to death in here before I even get to see a monster. I think the middle entrance is the best choice because at least I can feel air blowing. Maybe it leads to a more open area?

Ellis clenched the dagger in his hand and took a step forward into the dimly lit hallway beyond the doorway.