I left the room behind me and moved for the stairs once again. It was time to explore the rest of this tower. If the outside was anything to go by, the tower maybe had somewhere around forty to fifty floors in it. The floor that I had found the rooms with beds in them was the fifth floor, so I still had a lot left to explore.

To my chagrin, the next four floors after that were all filled with books just like most of the previous floors had been. And just like on the previous floors everything was squeaky clean here. Not a single speck of dust to be found anywhere at all. I’m not sure how magic really works here yet, but if I could learn whatever magic it was that accomplished this, I’d die a happy man.

Or a happier man, at the very least.

Not being as sleep-deprived and cold as I was last night when I passed by the first floors, I had the thought to actually check out a few of the books on these floors. However, when I opened the first book up and examined its pages, I encountered a problem.

I had no idea how to read this. I don’t know what kind of language these books were written in, but it certainly wasn’t English. I tried putting on ‘The Interpreter’s Prize’, but it didn’t seem to work with written language.

That’s annoying. I’m pretty sure the tooltip from the game said that it allowed you to understand most languages. It never specified whether or not it worked for both written and verbal language. Hopefully this just meant that it didn’t work with written language and not that it didn’t work with whatever language this was. Otherwise I might have a hard time later on.

Shaking my head in disappointment I closed the book and put it back in its spot on one of the dozens of shelves that filled this floor.

For a second, I thought about taking some of the books with me to examine them later, but I quickly changed my mind. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that nobody lived here and if someone did in fact live here, bringing these books with me would be tantamount to stealing. I mean, yeah, I took some of their food and slept in their house without permission, but that was an emergency. I didn’t have much choice in the matter. These books, however? Those I could live without.

After looking through the book-filled floors I started moving up towards the tenth floor.

As I climbed the stairs to the tenth floor I stopped, astonished, as I gaped around the large room before me. And by large, I mean large. Much larger than what could possibly fit inside this tower. I’d guess that you’d need at least two of these towers, maybe even three, to fit this room inside it. Yet, here I stood, looking at it with my own eyes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that somewhere along the way I somehow entered a portal that teleported me to a completely different building.

Although I didn’t actually know any better, so for all I knew I could very well have been teleported to another place. Who knows if I’d even notice if something like that were to happen.

But it was far more likely that whoever it was that had built this room just knew how to use spatial magic. There were rooms like this in ‘The Wayfarer’s Realm’ too.

Despite its size, the entirety of the room was lit up with a soft yellow glow. Floating in the air close to the ceiling were several rows of bright blue spheres that bobbed up and down in a mesmerizing manner.

The ceiling was arched and was made of some kind of stone that had a deep purple colour which fit in well with the blue lights that bobbed under it. Both the walls and floor of the room were made of the same stone as the ceiling. The floor was mostly covered in large, black rugs embroidered with intricate patterns in gold and most of the walls had beautiful dark red tapestry on them which hang between cerulean-coloured pillars of stone that went all the way up to the roof.

The stairs that I came from were placed at the side of the circular-shaped room and gave you an amazing view of it. I spent a while just appreciating the sheer elegancy of the room before my attention turned to the centre of it. There stood a platform that looked to be made entirely of blue light with stairs leading up to it from all sides. In the middle of that platform floated some kind of ball. It was small enough to be held in both hands and unlike the platform, it had a dark red colour. But when I looked closer at it, I saw that it wasn’t just red. It looked like the inside of the ball was swirling around with the dark red colour moving up to the surface most of the time, but the dark red was sometimes replaced by a foggy black mass at places and sometimes hints of gold could be seen swirling up to the sphere’s surface.

The ball, which was most definitely magical, was enthralling and stunning to look at, but it wasn’t the most noticeable thing in the room. What stuck out the most was the area surrounding the platform which the ball floated above. Instead of the dark purple-coloured stone floor or the fine black and gold rugs, the floor surrounding the platform was entirely black. At least it looked like it was black at first glance, but when I looked at it, I realized that it wasn’t black. It was scorched.

The rugs surrounding the area had charred corners and ash covered the blackened floor. In several places the floor had just melted and holes deep enough to cover your knees littered the place. Whatever had done this had clearly focused their firepower on the platform in the middle of the room.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that whoever built this place didn’t intend for it to look like this. Maybe whoever it was that broke in here did this? If they did, it doesn’t look like whatever they were trying to do worked, because the platform doesn’t have a scratch on it. What even is that!?

I moved to the centre of the room, crossing over the blackened and ruined floor and stopping in front of the first step made out of blue light. I apprehensively placed my foot on in and felt a little bit surprised when I felt my foot touch a solid surface. I’d expected it, but it still felt weird to stand on light. I placed my other foot on the next step, and then the next until I’d climbed up to the floating ball in the middle of the platform.

When I looked at it i felt a weird urge that I hadn't felt before. It was almost like the orb wanted me to touch it, and I had a hard time resisting. As I got closer the inside of the ball started swirling around faster and faster and when I was close enough to touch it, it was swirling around so fast that I could barely discern the different strands of colour inside. It was just a mesh of red, black and gold. I stretched out my hand and touched its surface. It was solid, but it felt like it moved around under my fingertips at the same time. I grabbed it with both of my hands and tried moving it, but it didn’t budge an inch.

The urge suddenly disappeared like it hadn't even been there to begin with. Backing away from the orb I looked at it again. Except for the colours swirling around slower as I got further away, there was no change at all. Disappointed, I turned around and descended the stairs. That ball looked interesting and with how it was positioned, I’m positive that it was some kind of powerful magical artefact. Just leaving it there feels wrong. The gamer in me was practically screaming in frustration. Powerful magical items weren’t supposed to just lie there. That’s just… wrong. I don’t like it. Something should have happened when I touched it. That's just how these things work.

But I can’t really do anything about it.

I looked around the room once again. Except the platform there wasn’t much else in here. On the opposite side of where the stairs I’d come from were, there was another spiral staircase leading to what I assumed was the next floor. There was also a single black door next to it. I was going to keep on moving up the floors but first I wanted to see what was behind that door.

It didn’t have a door handle and was surprisingly heavy. I barely managed to push it open even when I used all of my strength, which should still be quite a bit above the average for a person, even if Garlyn never focused much on the strength stat.

On the other side of the door there was a purple corridor that led into a room that was pitch black. I didn’t have a way to see in the dark, so I stretched out my right index finger and urged most of my mana into it to cast ‘Dimension Storage’. I looked, or rather felt, through what I had that could help me here. I hadn’t looked through all the items I had in here yet. I should probably do that when I get the time.

Besides the items I saw in there earlier, I also noticed that I had money in here. What amounted to almost 100 gold sat in my storage right now. That wasn’t much by ‘The Wayfarer’s realm’ standards, at least not for max-levelled characters, but it might be a bit more for an ordinary person. I doubt those coins work here, but hopefully I can at least sell them for a decent amount.

Looking through my storage wasn’t instantaneous. If I knew what I wanted I could get it immediately, but if I wasn’t sure of what I wanted I had to look through all the items manually, and that took some time. I looked through my items, which consisted of mostly worthless junk, for half a minute or so before I found something that could help me.

As I pulled my hand out of the fissure in space that led to my storage, a black lantern was pulled out. Inside the lantern there was a black stone that was held up by a couple of miniature sconces. The lantern had a small lever on its side and as I flipped the lever the dark stone suddenly lit up with a bright white light.

Using the lantern to lead my way, I passed through the corridor and entered the dark room. The ceiling, walls and ground all had the same deep purple colour that this floor was so rife with. The room was devoid of anything except for a small blue pyramid-shaped object that stood upside down on a pedestal in the middle of the room. The object was white, but it had a slightly blue sheen to it.

I hesitantly walked up to object and stretched out my index finger towards it. As soon as the tip of my finger connected with its surface, I felt a sudden pull on my body and the world around me shifted and moved, all the colours merging into one before it all turned black. In the pitch black darkness I saw something moving in the distance. A gaseuous cloud of red and black with a bright sheen that moved closer and closer to me. Out of reflex I tried putting my arms in front of me, only to realize that they weren't there as the cloud flew straight through me and disappeared. Then a second later, colour returned to the world and I found myself in the first floor of the tower again. And very nauseous.

Note to future me; Avoid touching unknown magical artefacts just because they’re shiny and magical. I should probably have realized earlier that doing that would get me in trouble eventually. At least nothing bad happened to me this time. After all, all that object did was transport me to the first floor of the tow—

I froze when I looked at the entrance to the tower.

There were two doors there. Just a few hours ago one of those doors had been lying in pieces on the floor. Was there some kind of magic that repaired the door? If so, then why hadn’t it already repaired it before I came here? Or when I was sleeping during the night?

When I touched that pyramid, the world around me had shifted and I had been teleported down here. Could it be, that maybe…?

I opened up my storage again and put my lantern away as I walked over to the doors and paused with my hand just in front of the door handle. Then, after taking a deep breath, I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

Instead of being met with the sight of a large, untamed forest, I was met by the view of a city. A city that looked like it could have been taken right out of ‘The Wayfarer’s Realm’ with buildings made out of stone and wood in all directions and people bustling about the streets like ants. There was even a small castle in the distance.

The pyramid hadn’t teleported me to the tower’s first floor. It had teleported me to the first floor of another tower.

And there were people here. Thank god!