Once the body of the former giant had been cleared from the room by Tony he began instructing them. "First things first, I should tell you all about the nature of Babel. The tower is a crucible that is designed to make people immortal, it is not the easiest route, nor the quickest, but it is the simplest. No one knows who made the tower originally, but whoever it was they were powerful. The tower is separated into fifty floors, with certain floors being ones that get you to a new stage of being. These floors are known as 'rest floors' and they do this by making the mana in your body transform into a different state. If you do not have enough mana or you are not a high enough stage then the jump to one of the rest floors could be fatal. This is why we train.

"I mentioned five stages earlier on. These stages are points that represent extreme jumps in physical and spiritual strength. The first stage, which almost all challengers start at, is the «Earth» stage. This stage is everyone's starting point, and is what most people spend their lives trying to escape."

"Does that mean we are going to have to get to the next stage to get through that door?" Said someone in the back. It was a thought held by most of the people in this odd stone room.

"Oh no." Tony replied, and most people let out a sigh of relief. "One person in every million has a chance of becoming a «Saint», so I doubt most of you will actually get to the first rest floor." Around Laurence jaws dropped. It was one thing to be told to train to achieve power, but another to be told you would almost definitely fail. "Saints are men often spoken of in legends. They are at least ten times stronger than the average person in the Earth stage, will live for a maximum of two hundred years and have the ability to make their spirit take physical form. They are supermen, but they are only the second stage.

"The third stage, one that I am only mentioning so you are able to recognise and not offend them, is the «Heaven» stage. These men and women are ten times stronger than any Saint, they can live for up to four hundred years and gain the ability to fly. Legendary heroes cower in fear at the mere presence of a Heaven stage individual, so be careful who you affront when climbing the tower."

The people in the room were gob-smacked. Tony had covered these godly beings like they were nothing serious, and only worth mentioning because of the weak people in front of him. He was truly blasé about the whole affair. After letting the room mull over the idea of these people for a minute he spoke again. “So, now you know what your aim in the tower is I can explain how you get the power to reach those peaks.” He paused and held up his small grey, fur covered hand and wisps of what looked like blue smoke began spinning around it. The smoke twirled and made various shapes then finally retreated back inside Tony. “That is mana. Controlling your own mana is a matter of will, but to produce it you first have to draw it from the world around you. There are three methods to taught to people to suck in mana from their surroundings. First there is «The Spiral Breath Formation», which is the method I will be teaching you, it is practised most often by the Absolution and Caesar clans, and is a painless and pure way to absorb energy. «The Stolen Life Formation» and the «The Inner Flame Formation» are the two other forms, however I do not practice these so cannot tell you much about them.”

The moment Tony mentioned «The Inner Flame Formation» it triggered a memory of Laurence’s. He remembered coming across that in his book and could remember it quite clearly. He immediately sat in the lotus position with both hands extended forward, with his palms up and breathed in through his nose. The air and energy collected in his chest at which point he forced it to reach the furthest corners in his body. Once the energy had reached his extremities he breathed all the air still in his lungs out explosively and quickly breathed in again. The mana contracted back to his diaphragm but more poured on top of it before it could escape.

Laurence could feel the energy in his body building up with every breath. His body devoured the mana with a voracity that could not be matched and held on to it for as long as it could. The process said to keep breathing like this until the ball of mana within sank to the level of the navel and formed a mana reservoir, so Laurence did. Normally when you do any breathing method you take in maybe 10% of the mana in the air but Laurence was taking in all of it. His body was like that of a starving man’s and it could not let go of any of it, which gave Laurence a feeling of euphoria. The method continued and the ball of mana sank lower and lower, until finally it congealed and began forming a shape. The red book said that the shape of the mana reservoir was the shape of a person's spirit and that at each stage of growth the spirit would become more extravagant.

Laurence was very excited to see what the shape of his soul was. He had tried to perform the formation several times during his first reading of the book but every time it had failed. He was quite dejected at the time and eventually gave up, but now he realised there must have been another factor in him failing. With each breath he felt his spirit filing with mana and taking form. Breath after breath after breath the mana sank to his navel until finally the spirit completed its shape. It was that hammer on his red book, shaped like something between a war hammer and an oversized smith's hammer and it looked like it was made of wrought iron. To Laurence it was wonderful, but then to him interesting things always were.

He slowly began opening his eyes and was surprised to see everyone looking at him. Tony looked happily at Laurence as if confirming something and then continued on with his lecture. "... And that is what happens when someone completely fills up their mana reservoir in one go. It usually only happens when you are used to a lot of mana and you're forming your spirit or your reservoir is completely emptied. It doesn't happen very often because in a battle people seeing where you are by the fact that your mana is visible is a problem."

Laurence zoned out again as he noticed something going on with his spirit. He saw the spirit vibrate and then ignite into flames. From what he read in the book he had learned he had to fan the flames with mana or he knew they would go out and not come back. He used his strange breathing pattern again and felt the flames becoming more and more permanent, at the same time his spirit felt more and more solid. Finally he felt a qualitative change in both the flame and his hammer. Rather than being made of wrought iron it was now made of black steel, while the flames themselves were bright blue and producing electrical sparks. Laurence couldn't help but feel excited because that flame meant he could refine metals and remove impurities from materials with ease.

The entire process of igniting his spirit took less than ten breaths but the moment he finished his eyes shone with an even greater vigour. He could feel the flow of mana in the area very clearly but wanted to know if he could see it, so he opened his eyes once again. This time not everyone was looking at him but the world itself seemed so much richer with colour. A couple of people were furtively glancing at him every-so-often but most people were paying attention to Tony instead.

"... Finally we come to the uses of mana." He said as Laurence began paying attention again. "There are two major uses for magic amongst «The Bookless», namely reinforcing your attacks and your defence. Magic as you might know it is the domain of the «Book of Chaos», so if you wish to summon whirlwinds or fire lightning from your fingertips then affiliate yourself with an elemental clan. Most people just channel their mana into their muscles or their weapons to fight. It's not as flashy as cutting someone up with the wind, but it's far more practical." Tony pulled a meter cube of stone out of thin air and said, "This is what happens when a person who has infused mana into their fists punches granite." He then proceeded to take a single swing at the block. His fist did not even touch the block but forced a shock wave to impact the block instead. The moment the shock wave came into contact with the block there was a bang like a cannon blast and the entire block turned to dust.

"Of course this is with years of training." Tony continued. "Simply put, mana allows your body to go above and beyond its normal capabilities, and with a fine grasp of control over you can even fight against people and creatures of a higher stage than you."

Laurence could see that Tony was lying. It was not a true lie, but a half-lie. Yes, Laurence had no doubt that infusing your body with mana would make you stronger, but that is not what Tony did to destroy the rock. Instead he had flung a super-fine net made of mana over the stone and torn it to pieces. It made Laurence wonder what else someone could do with mana if they had enough control, and how he could go about finding out.

The lesson eventually came to a close as Tony told people to try and use the formation that they had been taught. Most would not succeed, but perhaps one would do well enough to pass before the rest of the children came and scared off the older challengers. For the most part this stage of Babel was luck based. According to «Eman Kaent», a famous scholar in the tower, everyone had the capability to climb the tower, but most people did not have the perseverance to reach even the first stage. This reduced those who climbed the tower to one of three groups, the talented, the hard working and the lucky. Shortly before his death he also said "I would rather be lucky than good." before dying to a scorpion sting in his sleep. It turns out he was not one of the lucky.

Laurence walked up to Tony at the end of the lesson with a confused look on his face. For the last hour he had been trying summon his spirit by he seemed to fail every time. No matter what he did he could not work out how to get his spirit's physical form to appear, eventually he caved. It turned out Laurence was missing one thing, a name for his spirit. Spirits were temperamental and would only answer to the name they were given, so Laurence racked his brain for a name. Eventually he decided to call the hammer «Jormugand» after Gudrun's spear in Gudrun and Selene. He called its name and felt a rumble in the surrounding area as his spirit took form. It began as a facula in Laurence's hand but quickly spread to form the long shaft and large head that he recognised contained his mana reservoir. Finally, as the hammer completed, it ignited with that strange sparking flame culminating at the blade-tip capping the shaft of the hammer. It was imposing, as tall as Laurence and as he began swinging it, it seemed weightless in his hands.

The young boy smiled as he looked at his spirit and said "I would like to take the test now."

"Child, you know you have already succeeded, why put up the act?" Tony replied, walking back to the area near the door.

"Simple. I want to know if I can actually pass. There might be some reason why I fail, and if there is I want to see it." Knowledge was everything to Laurence. All the things he did were done because he wanted to know something new, it was almost an addiction to him. He had to find out what was beyond that next hill or round that next turn compulsively. So like all the others who would come after him, he walked forward and padded through that odd point in space with the only difference being his mana reservoir filled up quicker.

Tony handed Laurence a small bag and held his right hand for a moment. Once he let go there was a sun-like pattern on his hands with the number 0 in the centre. "In that bag there are your rewards for completing the first test, a «pointer stone» that leads you to the location of the next test room and 1 «copper shard» with 20 «stone shards». Shards are the currency on all floors of the tower, and so you get a sense of scale, 1 stone shard is worth about a loaf of low quality bread. 100 stone shards to a single copper one, and the average farm-hand's wage is 4 copper shards 50 stone every year." The man-dog gestured to the stairs, "Now go. You have thirty days to get to the next testing room. If you fail then you will have to wait for sixty to take the test again."

With that the small boy ran up the stairs and disappeared into Babel. As Tony walked away all he could do was wish the boy good luck and wonder if he would be caught up in the turbulence to come. It was more likely than not.