Abe the Wizard

After three days, the elves and the dwarves had completely renovated the sixteen floors of the Cliff Magic Tower. They were very passionate the whole time. It must’ve been because of the good food they were having.

While the sixteenth floor had been the one that was the most well-preserved, Abel decided to have it completely rebuilt from scratch. He wanted to build it all with better materials. He didn’t need the dwarves to do it for him, though. From this point on, it was all the work of the elven portal masters.

For every floor of the tower, he wanted there to be light, sound-barricading devices, seclusion circles, mana gathering circles, and many other things. Such things could only be achieved with magic circles, and according to Lady Carrie, even if these devices were installed, the elves still needed to decorate them to actually finish them.

Thus, Abel decided to leave all the rune-drawing and decoration to the elves. After all, he didn’t know much about decorating. Like, he didn’t even understand human art, let alone the top-end work that the elves were doing for him.

Also, Lady Carrie was someone that he could trust. As much of a perfectionist she was, she wanted to do the most that she could with the number of people she had. That being said, she wasn’t letting the dwarves take their own breaks.

“What do you have planned for that empty area, Grandmaster Abel?” Carried asked, pointing towards an empty area on the hanging fort platform.

Abel replied, “I guess a garden, like… the one I see in Angstrom City?”

Lady Carrie immediately gave a very detailed plan to that request, “I’ve seen the base of this platform, Grandmaster Abel. If we set up a defensive cover, this whole place will become a location that’s separated from the outside world. We can effectively make a greenhouse out of this place. If you’d like, we can use our magic circles to stabilize the temperatures in a way that the plants can grow very well. To provide an unlimited source of water, we just need both the freezing circles and the heating circles.”

“And with some pipes along the way, we’ll create an irrigation system that can do all the work to maintain whatever plants you plan on growing.”

Because of how perfect Lady Carrie’s idea was, Abel couldn’t help but keep nodding. Having a garden might not be very wizard-like, but he sure loved the idea of having a good view while doing his training.

“And don’t put these toys here. Just look at them! They’re ruining the aesthetic we’ve worked so hard on,” Lady Carrie pointed towards the war puppets and ballistas. It’s almost as if she was disturbed by their presence.

Isiah’s eyes started glaring after Lady Carrie’s comment. These “toys” were the pride of the dwarves. Obviously, he didn’t like the idea of having an elf badmouthing their masterpieces. Wizard Cyril was the one telling him to calm down, but even he was starting to get very annoyed.

But hold on just a moment. Lady Carrie, too, was very pissed off. After seeing how generous the dwarves were to Abel, she felt that they were trying to disgrace her. She was the one who said that these war puppets and ballistas were “toys,” but she actually had a very good idea of how ridiculously expensive they were. So what now? Was Abel the son-of-law of the dwarves then? Why were the dwarves so good to him? The more she thought about, the more she could only think of one explanation, and that was that they were trying to make a fool out of her.

Abel started to realize how bad the mood had gotten. As the host of this magic tower (and to prevent a potential war from happening), he decided to contact his tower spirit immediately.

“Your name is Viola!” Abel said as he gave the tower a name. Needless to say, the name came from the brave rogue who sacrificed her life to defend her homeland.

“Yes, Master. My name is Viola,” a mechanical voice replied from inside the magic tower.

“Viola,” Abel sent a command with his power of Will, “I want you to connect to all of the small-sized war puppets.”

“Your command has been received,” the tower spirit replied.

Abel started feeling a slight tingle in the air. Then, the one hundred war puppets started raising their heads at once.

“An unverified spirit has been detected. Do you wish to connect to it?”

Abel turned to ask Wizard Cyril, “Does the platform have its own spirit, Wizard Cyril?”

As though having made a new discovery, Wizard Cyril opened his eyes excitedly, “I don’t think so, no, no. Wait, no, maybe it does! We haven’t done enough research on it. Maybe you’ve found something that we haven’t!”

Abel nodded his head and said, “I’ll give it a try, then. See if I can connect to it.”

“Connect!”

“The tower is now trying to make a connection…” the tower spirit replied.

“An unverified connection has been discovered. Do you want to give it permission to connect?”

It was another mechanical voice that said this. It came from the crystal body on the hanging fort platform. Maybe the dwarves got it wrong. The crystal body wasn’t an operation plate. Perhaps it was a spirit, after all.

“I’ll allow it,” Abel sent the command.

“A super spirit has been discovered. Do you want to merge with it?”

Basically, the crystal body’s spirit was requesting to merge with the magic tower spirit. When two artificial bits of intelligence were combined, one could produce an even faster and more intelligent version of a spirit. Of course, no one in the Holy Continent had ever used this method before.

Abel made an inquiry before he moved on, “Will this “merging” thing do any damage to the spirit?”

“No! We will become stronger because of it!” the two spirits replied. They were supposed to be emotionless, but strangely enough, they sounded like they really wanted to be combined together.

“Combine, then!” Abel sent the command.

“Yes!” the two spirits said together again.

That’s when Abel felt a disturbance in his power of Will. For an instant, he couldn’t sense the presence of the two spirits or the one hundred war puppets. After they lost their connection to the tower spirit, they started switching off and lowered their heads.

Wizard Cyril wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to intrude Abel’s privacy. As for Lady Carrie, since she just became an intermediate druid, she had no idea about what just happened. As far as she could tell, the war puppets just suddenly lost their connection.

This didn’t last too long, though. Soon, the disturbance in the power of Will started stabilizing again. The war puppets, too, raised their heads one more time. Something strange happened, though. Instead of moving at the same time, they started moving doing their own thing. Some were fast. Some were slow. It was almost like they all had a mind of their own.