A full hour passed.

Nico's hands pushed the final dial. It clicked into place, and the modification action changed.

[Your magical frequency has almost adjusted]

He stood up and took a step back, admiring all the math and calculation drawn on the stone path. Sure, he had Measure, but physically drawing things out helped him think of new ideas and look at the theories with a different perspective.

"I haven't been able to test theories like this so freely," Nico mused.

Measure did the hard math for him. All he had to do was create the ideas. Each new idea got him one step closer to understanding how the creator of puzzle thought. Most of his ideas with the dials had been failures. A few times, he had put in too much MP, and got knocked on his back for the attempt.

Even these failures helped.

He placed his hands on his hips and took an exasperated sigh.

“This should be the correct spell formation and modifications,” Nico said confidently. “What’s weird is, I don’t think it actually does anything magical except unlock this magical barrier for one person to enter.”

This modular formation wasn’t versatile at all. He was pretty certain it couldn’t be used for anything other formations or spell theories. However, Nico could not help but feel an affinity towards the person who created this.

"Whoever created this lock loved magical theory for its own sake," he concluded. “They were my kind of people. Okay, calculate percentage of success.”

[Probably of the accuracy of spell formation with your current knowledge: 87%]

Eighty seven percent wasn't bad. That was better than seventy three percent fifteen minutes earlier. Considering he hadn’t been formally trained by anyone, he was pretty damn proud of what he achieved. Everything he had applied to unlock this came from theories he cooked up over the years, but deemed too risky to test. This was the first time he really got to explore them. Measure had made it all possible. What if he applied it to magic that could call his own?

He said, "How much MP should I invest?."

[6 MP]

That wasn’t bad. With all his attempts, he was only down to less than half his maximum MP. Since he wasn’t summoning a spell, he could still input his own magic power into the spell formation without fear of a major backlash. That was the main difference between a spell formation and the spell itself.

Spells technically didn't need spell formations to be summoned, but required knowledge, power, and training Nico had never been introduced to.

Spell formations, on the other hand, relied purely on magical theory. It shaped, directed, and channeled magic.

Nico extended his magic into the dials. They glowed a raspberry red. The atmosphere seemed to release pressure, and Nico’s ears popped.

[You have unlocked the magical barrier for one person to enter.]

He stepped forward through the thin film of the magical barrier, and was greeted with a change in the scenery. From the outside the obelisk looked worn down and ancient, with vines creeping all over it. Now, it looked clean and pristine as it had been made only a few hours earlier.

"Must've been some kind of illusion," Nico surmised.

The amount of magical power alone to cast an illusion that big and powerful and lasted for who knows how long wasn't something he could even fathom. And the person who framed him had decided to go inside that monstrosity of an obelisk.

[You've entered the lost tower of the forgotten sage.]

A giant stone door with intricate designs was cracked open enough to fit four people. It didn’t surprise Nico, but he did step toward it warily.

As he got closer, he realized that there was another magical barrier, but nowhere near as complex as the one belonging to the white obelisk. It shimmered with a pinkish reflective light.

“Examine the barrier for relevant information for one MP,” Nico whispered. His blue bar drained a little.

[Estimation of time since footsteps; three hours.]

More information in the window popped up, and he scrolled through it for anything useful. According to what he could divine, the barrier wasn’t related to the sage’s tower.

"It looks like this magical barrier won’t disappear on a time-based mechanism. That means the spell matrixes feeding off of the residual energies of the sigil," Nico concluded. "An experienced mage set this up, someone who could cast multiple class one spells."

Nico was officially dealing with at least a mage-class practitioner, a whole class of power above him. That made sense. He couldn’t see how the complex city-wide spell array could have been made by anyone at his own level of power and knowledge.

When he got closer to the magical barrier, the thin pink film became less opaque. On the other side of it, he saw creatures that reminded him of slimes in the Primal Fantasy games he had played as a child. They were eating away at the magical barrier from the inside out.

Nico had never seen these things before, but he had a hunch about what they were. He checked his memory was pretty certain he had read about them. Without needing to Examine, his Auto-Scan provided him the information.

[Ectoplasmic amourphisms. Magical parasites of the Grey Dead.]

Ectoplasmic amorphisms, or casually referred to as slimes, weren’t actually sentient. They were completely reactionary, feeding off of any nearby source of magic. It was why they were attacking the barrier from the inside out.

Nico grimaced. He didn't want to face them until this magical frequency completely adapted to the new environment so he could cast a proper spell. This was his first time encountering them outside of books. Spell formations might not cut it.

First, he needed to figure out the nature of this magical barrier before trying to get inside. This one was made by someone significantly less powerful than whoever this wizard king was, but it was still more complex than anything Nico had ever made himself. Auto-Scan gave him basic information, but he would need more.

"Examine energy flow of the barrier to see if it matches or is similar to any schools of magical theory I know.," Nico said. His MP drained by two.

He could feel his ability working in the undercurrents of his mind. Thirty seconds later, he received a notification.

[Secondary energy using your sigil as an anchor for a leyline detected.]

Nico frowned.

The weakness of spell formations was that anyone with enough knowledge of the formation could hijack it or alter it. That was what he did with Yuri's formation to create the wall of ice.

Luckily, Nico had known enough about Russian magical theory to create something on the fly to hijack it. His own sigil was a secondary source of energy. That implied whoever the murderer was had pretty much picked a lock to get past this barrier, and left the lockpick in the door. They wanted to get past this barrier without alerting the person who made it.

That only meant one thing. His murderer wasn't the only person that was here. There were two different groups of people. Not only was his enemy here, but a completely new factor. The situation had just become more dangerous.

Nico pressed both hands against the barrier, and leaned on it. Unsurprised, he entered the barrier.

But he had expected some kind of resistance, and so pushed with too much strength with all of his weight. He tumbled forward and stepped awkwardly onto the group of slimes.

Nico tried to jerk back through the magical barrier in a panic, but he couldn't get back out.

Yikes.

Slimes attached themselves to Nico shoes and pants. Something felt like a pinprick on Nico’s soul, and he felt his magic draining. For being amorphous little jellies, they were physically strong enough to lock him in place. It felt like his feet were in hardened concrete. Nervous, he looked at the top left of his vision, and the HUD appeared. His MP drained about one per second.

[Due to your MPA being drained, any at adaptation to this world's magical frequency has been halted for the moment.]

Nico pumped his legs and jumped, hoping the momentum would be enough to get him out of their grasp. He floated in the air for a triumphant second before crashing hard on to the stone floor. Ouch.

With his left hand, he pulled out one of his two black markers, and drew Gallahad's Fire Formation with no modification since it didn't rely on cardinal directions. He slapped his hand on the array, and yelled. "Burn, you little shifts!"

[You are unable to summon spells due to your magic not having adapted to the new environment.]

Oh, yeah. That. How stupid could he be?

He felt something click in the back of his mind, like he had been working on trying to solve a problem for days and it only came out to a solution now.

[Spell formation processed. New spell formation acquired.]

Perfect. His ability had been trying to create a new spell formation from the theories he had for the past couple hours. Since it was a formation that directed and shaped magic for a specific purpose, it didn't require summoning a spell.

It couldn't have come at a better time.

One of the slimes crawled up his arm and pinned it to the ground. Nico still had enough room to draw with his marker the formation labeled as Ectoplasmic Binding.

He slammed his hand on the new formation next to the slimes, and grinned. “Thanks for playing, but it’s game over for you.”

All the slimes froze in place, then trembled. Their small amorphous little bodies twisted together in a misshapen lump, and were suddenly thrust into the circle of his new spell array.

Little shrieks tore the air before they were muted to silence inside the formation. The empty circle inside his new spell formation was filled nearly half way with a blue glow that quickly faded to a black which matched the shade of his marker.

Nico let out a breath and checked his HUD. His MP bar and stopped draining.

[Ectoplasmic Binding Formation is at 40% capacity. You may keep binding up until 100% capacity. You may release binding of ectoplasmic amorphousms for a cost of .3 MP.]

Nico sat up. He took a moment to let his heartbeat go down. His MP replenished slowly, but still faster than it had done on earth. That was odd. The magic in the Next Over must have been thicker.

"Measure MP regeneration in this environment compared to Earth," Nico said.

[110%.]

"Nice."

Now that he had a good look inside, the entrance led to a long stone hall that angled downward. Echoes of voices came from deep inside the tower . He said, "Estimated distance of the voices that I hear."

[Approximately 400 yards.]

The hair on his neck rose. They were close. Were those of metal lashing and spells going off? If so, someone was fighting.

If his enemy was there, he could attack them mid-fight, and catch them off guard. All he would have to do was Examine them to see if they held his anchor sigil.

Nico cracked his neck and walked down the hall. "Time to get going."

[Your magic is stabilized with the new environment.]

Nico rolled his eyes. "A little late to the party, aren't you?"

As he walked, hemused on the new spell formation he had created. It came from the binding formation that he had stolen, or a more scientifically appropriate word, copied from the driver. It wasn't an exact copy of the spell. Nico didn't know the exact theory behind it or the appropriate memories that were associated with it.

Instead, he had taken what he could extrapolate from it and applied it to Gallahad's Control Formation with some modifications. He had done so using a theory that had been in the back of his mind for two years but hadn't had the courage to test for fear of it backfiring.

Now, he had Measure to calculate the odds for him, or create a spell that was safe, if not completely optimal.

“The problem with this method,” Nico muttered to himself. “Are any spells or formations I’ve made pale in comparison to the real deal. It’s versatile, but so far, I’ve only been able to make cantrips.”

For some reason, he couldn’t help but think of the puzzle test outside. He felt there was something more he could learn from it, but had no idea what it was.

"Hopefully this obelisk has more spell formations I can study." Nico hoped.

[Balthazar's Mir Seed is 99% absorbed. It will require a full night’s sleep to stabilize its effects. Unknown additional benefits.]

Nico stopped, surprised. With everything that happened, he completely forgot about the mir seed. It felt like that happened a whole world away.

"Technically, it was,” he considered.

If he needed a full night sleep, he could see what those unknown additional effects were. He did have an idea to simulate the effects of sleep. The formation would require him to meditate inside it to regenerate both his MP and Stamina. That could reduce the time from absorbing the last percentage of the mir seed maybe even down to an hour.

No. That would cost him precious time. He was so close.

On the other hand, the mir seed had stabilized his magical energies enough that he gained his awesome new ability. Ever since he got his new ability, he had used it every step of the way to get him closer to the truth. And it did save his ass multiple times. Without his new ability, and the mir seed to have stabilized it, Nico would've been dead a million times over. The additional benefits of the seed could be just as great as Measure.

"Or the seed’s extra benefits may not be all that much," Nico countered, playing devil’s advocate with himself.

Nico's stomach growled as he strode down the long stone hall again. His lips felt dry. He had food that morning, but he was beginning to get really thirsty.

That reminded him that didn't know how long he would be there for. He was hungry and had no water.

"I can't stay out here for too long, " Nico concluded. "I need to move. But first..."

Nico double-backed toward the bound slimes. He bent down and studied the binding formation. His magic sensed their magical energies..

Now that they were under control, they were theoretically under his control. That would mean he could divine information from them with little regard for their pranic barrier. If there were more of these in the tower, then he would need all the information he could get.

"Examine controlled slimes." Nico demanded. Begin and

[Ectoplasmic amorphism are beings of pure energy structured with their soul represented in physical form. Inside their center holds a single soul shard, intangible to physical touch. Once broken, it will disperse into soul energy. The magical energies they absorb cause them to grow until they have enough to split asexually.]

Nico studied the screen a little longer. None of that information was knowledge he knew prior to Examining them. That meant his ability had somehow given him information he didn’t have and put it in a way he could understand. Were divination abilities supposed to be this power?

Either way, he was glad he double backed to Examine the slimes. He had been working on a theory for years now that would solve so many of his problems. This would be the foundation for getting closer to making that theory a reality.

He turned around. For now, it was time to go deeper into the obelisk