— Hikari's gear (improvised) —
[Caterpillar harvest sack] Need extra space to hold the hive's heart. Can't absorb it right now.
[Arm guards x2] Hopefully, they protect against the aether flame.
[Leg guards x2] Wanted to make shoes but couldn't. Leg guards it is.
[Shard pouch x2] One on each leg. Contains maybe a hundred shots each.
[Orb pouch x1] Free up the left hand.
The platform stops at the fourth floor.
This is where the trial was supposed to teach her to breathe wyvern flame.
It was left in ruins.
The vines had stopped growing.
Their carcasses were truly dead this time.
Another giant caterpillar was feeding on the vines.
Hikari draws her throwing dagger, ready to catch her next meal.
After observing it for a second, she sheathes her dagger.
It was just a baby, not enough meat to be worth boiling a cauldron for.
Hikari advances cautiously up the spiral staircase.
Her sword drawn, her fully charged orb in hand.
Mana sense.
The tower's mana flowed within the walls.
It surged upward along the central shaft.
Movements.
Hikari stopped just behind the doorway.
She listens.
The crackling of wyvern flame.
The growl of a wyvern as it thrashed about.
It was fighting with something.
Hikari charges out of the stairway into the vast chamber.
The howling wind coming from the crack in the tower blasted her face as she emerged.
Chirping sounds.
It was just a wyvernling trying to drag a caterpillar out of the tower.
The giantess emerging from the stairway startled it.
It abandoned its prey and scrambled out of the tower as far as it could before the hungry giantess got any ideas.
Hikari shrugs.
She surveys the vast chamber.
It was covered in dead, charred plant material.
She spots one or two baby caterpillars feasting on the remains of the hive she cleared perhaps a day ago.
"(Flames)"
The voice in her head again.
She's gotten used to it, and it no longer hurts.
Puzzled, she surveyed the chambers again.
So much of it was destroyed that she could not make sense of its purpose.
Only the massive pillars that support the weight of the entire tower remained.
Large gaps in the spiraling stairway.
She'll have to jump her way up.
"(Flames)"
The voice kept whispering.
"Mmm."
Mana sense.
An intense, invisible pillar of mana surged upward from the center of the room.
Hikari aimed her orb and incinerated the thick layer of dead plant.
A telekinetic push swept the ash away.
It was a massive circular tile.
It was similar in color and texture to the special tile she had encountered in the trials so far.
She recognized it as the conductor of the tower's mana.
As she stepped into the circle, she immediately found herself at the point where the entire tower's mana converges.
"Argh!"
She gritted her teeth to endure it.
Her salamander skin was quickly saturating with mana.
She stepped back, realizing the mana was intense enough to kill her if she tried to meditate in it.
Woosh! She burned away the dead undergrowth covering the chambers, using the excess mana she'd absorbed from the tower's epicenter.
Parts of Murals underneath the thick undergrowth reveal themselves.
Hikari goes back to the circle to replenish her mana.
She extends only her arm, holding the orb into the circle.
Woosh. The fully recharged orb easily burns through section after section.
Click. Braziers lit up as the vegetation was cleared.
Mana lines within the walls began flowing again as the flames warmed the wall that had sat cold for centuries.
Polygonal walls flanked her.
Carvings on the walls glowed.
From the left.
A sitting stickman with one squiggle to each side.
Below it. Another stickman with two squiggles.
The carvings lit up one by one.
Three squiggles.
The symbols of the trials Hikari has already cleared.
They were just as badly drawn as the symbols on the doors when she cleared the trial.
Second wall, the stickman holding diamonds in front of the wyvern heads.
Third wall, stickmen holding a wyvern head with squiggles coming out of the wyvern's mouth.
A wall carved with words in a language she could not recognize.
The stickmen drawings were much more helpful.
To the right, four more empty walls.
Four more trials remain in the tower.
"Flames."
She aimed her orb at the wall full of words.
The words lit up with the tower's fiery mana as the flames licked the stone.
Rumbling sounds. She felt the stones behind the wall move.
Then they stopped. The glow began to dim.
The wall began losing mana.
Stones behind the wall began unwinding.
"More."
Hikari steps back towards the surging mana in the center of the room.
Her orb charges. Her arm saturates with mana.
The burning feeling the first floors of the trial had inoculated her against.
Woosh. Her flames licked the wall.
Rumbling sounds. Her flames activated the mechanism behind the wall.
The words on the wall glowed.
Then she felt the mechanism behind the wall slow.
She kept up her flames.
But it turned slower and slower.
Until it stopped.
Her flames petered out as the orb ran out of mana.
The mechanism reverses back towards its starting state as the mana on the wall peters out.
"Stronger."
Hikari checks her orb.
She has already pushed it to its limits.
If she pushed it further, it would explode like her throwing shards.
Clearly, the trial was demanding more.
Even without stickman drawings, she figures she needs to charge the wall with the tower's mana.
Palms to the stone.
She channels the mana in her body into the wall.
The words glow, the mechanisms rumble.
Click. Something clicked.
Hikari stopped.
She takes a break, drinking from her pot and letting her body cool.
The first passage lit up.
She still has no idea what it means.
But she was making progress.
She sits down.
The recoil from channeling the mana she'd just picked up was heavy.
Picking up a new mana form takes a recruit at the RazenHeir house years.
She took at least a few months to get used to the strange flames that burn steel and cannot be doused by cold water.
It has gotten dark outside.
She retreats to the stairway, sheltered from the howling wind.
Crunch. One cannonball fruit popped into her mouth.
She goes to sleep.