The other side of the doors was the simple room that they first met the adjudicator of this floor in. He was sitting on a table next to an hourglass that had run about a third of the way through. Magnius, he had said his name was, was not a large man, but with his spectacles low on his nose and a book in hand he looked like quite the scholar. As the two girls walked through the exit to the odd space warping dungeon he put down his book, looked at the timer and greeted the girls with a look of pleasant surprise upon his face.

“Congratulations ladies!” He said the moment they closed the doors. “You are the first people to complete this round of tests. Would you like a rest or to move on immediately?”

“I want to move on immediately!” Said Cleo. “I want to see what the third floor contains.”

“Please Cleo, I need a rest.” Said Winoa. “We have been focussing intently for hours and I just need a moment to relax. Can we sit down and move on in a bit?”

Cleo looked at her friend and then realised how drained she actually felt. The task that they had been presented with has stressed their minds to their greatest depths. It did not seem like much, but when presented with odd rooms constructed in ways that made no sense to reasonable thought it would cause a lot of undue stress on the minds of the challengers. She sat down next to her friend and began to massage her temples. Her headache had come on the moment she had left the room and let herself relax, and not unrightly so. She had pushed herself way beyond what was entirely necessary in passing this test but it had made her cry and nothing had done that to her in a long time. Her family was not worth her tears in her eyes, so she never cried. No matter what they did to her.

“While you girls are sitting there, would you like your reward for completing the third tier of tests of Babel?” Said Magnius.

“Sure” both girls said with pained expressions on their faces. Their headaches were quickly beginning to ease up but that did not mean they were ready to approach anything complicated yet. Magnius pulled a couple of wooden charms out of a small bag and said “These talismans are known as «Break Talismans». They are well used artefacts that can be activated to break through something. The better quality the talisman the more powerful they will be.”

Both girls looked at the talisman in their hands. They had heard of the main product of the Dominus clan before, but they had never actually seen one. A high quality break talisman could stun even an ascendant immortal, but the lower grade ones would work well enough on saints or lower. These talismans were one time use trump cards that could completely change the outcome of a fight. It was a precious lifeline that they had been given on this floor.

“As well as the talisman, you will also receive four copper and eighty stone shards.” He handed them the money, which they both put in their storage spaces. “The final thing is that I need to upgrade your pointer stone. It will now contain an instant messaging system. You will be able to register the aura frequency of someone’s stone and then sent them messages, no matter where they are in the tower.”

The girls had seen the stones do this for members of their clans who had challenged the tower before. It seemed to be the most useful addition that the stone actually had, or at least the one that people relied on most often. Cleo quickly registered Winoa’s aura frequency and her friend did the same.

“With that you can leave whenever you want. If you would like to stay please don’t worry too much. No one will likely be coming out of the maze for a few hours yet.”

The girls chatted about it for a while and eventually came to the conclusion that they would leave once they rested up. It did not take long, owing to their saint-like constitutions, and so soon they were on their way again. They left Magnius to his own devices and ascended into an extremely large cavern.

The cavern was one of the most stunningly beautiful natural formations the girls had ever seen. They gazed in awe at the way the surroundings were lit up by the red «Salamandrite», and how there were beautiful ethereal patterns made from the multicoloured gems. It was a breathtaking underground maze that they would have to walk through to get to the next door. Winoa pulled out her pointer stone and checked the distance to the next stele.

“Umm... Cleo? We may have an issue.”

Cleo had not really been paying too much attention to what Winoa had been doing. She was too entranced by the magnificence of the gemstones surrounding them, and the elemental energy she could feel sprouting from them. Winoa’s words snapped her out of her reverie, “What? What’s up?” She said as she turned around to look at her friend. Before Winoa could even say a word Cleo could see what the issue was. The pointer stone was showing a large sixty above it. Her face dropped as she recognised the multitude of issues with that number. “It’s going to take two months? Two whole months to get to the next room? What are we going to do for food?”

They looked around and collected some gemstones before moving on. It was reaching the end of the first day when Winoa pulled out the gems and had a close look at them. Cleo could not see what she was looking at them for but when she shouted out in success the young girl became intrigued.

“Cleo! I think I have worked out a solution to our future food problem.” Winoa looked very proud of herself.

“What is it Win?”

“I’m not going to be able to do it yet, but you have a fair amount of earthen control. You could use the earthen power in these gems to speed up the growth of the potato seeds we have in our storage spaces! It’s effectively infinite food as long as you can find yellow gems.” She threw a few bright yellow gems at Cleo. “Examine them, you’ll be able to feel the earthen chaos coming out of them.”

“Do you think this is «Treantite»? If it is then we have struck a goldmine and should collect as many gemstones as we can.” Cleo was taken aback. Treantite was one of the most valuable agricultural gemstones. It was required for a chaos practitioner to grow any large amounts of plants with success. It also allowed for people to use their own more earthen power more precisely.

“I think so. If the red stones are salamandrite and the green are treantrite, does that mean the the blue are «Nereid Aquamarines»? And what are the white stones?”

“I don’t know. Either way I will grow some potatoes for us when we get to our next stopping point.”

The girls moved on once they had eaten and slept. The cavern should have been oppressive to them but due to the affluent elemental energy both Cleo and Winoa loved being there. They quickly paced through the caves, not even stopping to take breaks and checked their pointer stones regularly. The stone picked up their increase in pace and registered that they would only take forty days at the rate they were going. They were both pretty happy about that, and so at the end of the day Celo decided to sort out a bigger meal than they had had over the last couple of days.

She pulled out a couple of seed potatoes out and infused earthen energy into one of them. The potato quickly swelled and then exploded from the excess energy. She let out a gasp when she was covered in mashed potato. Failure after failure happened until Cleo finally began succeeding with plant growth. It was hard for her to control the power so meticulously because it required the opposite of what Cleo was used to. Fire was all about releasing mana at its maximum, and wind was all about keeping the mana flow steady. Earth was often about using just the right about of mana appropriate to grow plants. Eventually after blowing up nearly twenty potatoes Cleo could finally grow the potato to its maximum. She quickly grew a few more and began preparing them for dinner.

The two girls chatted and laughed about the situation they were in over dinner, then quickly decided to go to bed and prepare for the next day. Cleo was just about to drift off to sleep when she noticed a red knife stuck into the ground. “I wonder how that got there...” she thought as she faded into blissful nothing.