Chương 74: Chapter 66 - The tower gives, the tower takes

The ring platform around the tower had picked up a smell. Thousands of fish floated belly-up in the waters underneath us, almost like a carpet. They had tried to clean it up a few times, but every draining pulse from the tower created too many more dead fish. So, they figured they'd give it a couple of months before all the fish in the ocean were dead, and then clean up. That wasn't the perspective I was looking for, especially since I was a part of the problem's origin. But we had a meeting with Gilgamesh.

It had been two weeks since the Tower changed. On the plus side, I had my mana back. On the down side, we wouldn't be having the meeting if the secret societies' higher-ups had figured out a good solution. I walked to the side dome. The main dome had changed. Since the pods no longer worked, they got thrown out. In their place, the building was reconstructed to provide infrastructure for new climbers, who were arriving by road.

Some were mages, many ordinary people who got lured in by the vision that everyone on Earth had. The guards at the side hub entrance led me through. I walked up the stairs, more careful than I normally would have been as I had about the bare minimum amount of blood in me. The conference room was moved from the original hub. Gilgamesh already sat at the end of a horseshoe-shaped table. We exchanged nods, and I sat at the south end. Five people were here already, Henrik among them. The people slowly gathered.

Verchiel for the Church side, a lot more grim than he had been before the fight with Cassandra. Liu came with an old man, who sat down straight next to Gilgamesh. Wait, I'd heard of him. That was Elder Ming of the Tribunal of Heavenly Dragons. Liu set out a tea service for exactly one person and began brewing. From the Yamato Syndicate came Yukiko, two people I hadn't heard of, and an older man, still with two katanas. Kirishima, if I remembered the name right.

About fifteen more climbers trickled in, pretty much everyone I knew and five new faces. Mina came last, hoodie, sneakers, hands in her pockets, and dropped into the chair beside mine hard enough to make the table reconsider its tilt. With a sigh, Gilgamesh motioned at her.

"Your spot is here." And he meant the open spot next to him. Mina looked over the room before her gaze settled on a woman about my age in a suit. She had sharp features, the professional expression of I'm here to become the CEO and her hair tied into a bun with two long needles.

"Jessica, you handle the official part. You always do that, anyway."

"Yes, madam." Jessica got up, walked to the table's head, and sat down on the spot, trying not to smirk as she spread her tablet, failing. Pleased, Mina leaned to me.

"You smell like her," she said, not quietly. I glared at her.

"Surely you have advice on how to solve that." She chuckled, turning toward Gilgamesh, ignoring me. How helpful. He looked over the room.

"We seem to be all here, anyway. The situation could be better. The tower drain has so far been limited to the Pacific Ocean, but it keeps spreading. It will reach Australia, Japan, and Indonesia within a month and a half. Mainland Asia and the Americas will start being drained within two to three weeks after that. Moreover, the mana drain is slowly destabilizing the very foundation of Earth's mana system." Kirishima said something short in Japanese. Yukiko didn't translate.

"As for solving the problem," Gilgamesh continued.

"We are short on options. While the tower allows climbing, the floors have changed. Mina has been kind enough to go explore, and she spent ten days on floor one. The floors are now country-sized, and the floor progression is now linear. The standard climbing method is too slow for our purposes, and even if it was not, we would be unlikely to reach anything of interest through them, anyway." Elder Ming poured his tea.

"Three of my disciples have left for the climb. They will advance, but they have yet to cross floor one. It is of utmost necessity to find a new way to access the tower."

"At least to floor forty-three," Kirishima added.

"Because the core mechanism for the drain is unlikely to be new, and no records of our pre-transformation climbs indicate its existence." Mina waved a hand in front of her face.

"The physical tower ends at floor ten, roughly speaking. I'll go climb normally, but the primary concern is finding a way for us to move to spiritual forms with equipment. Jessica's working on that." The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Jessica lifted her eyes off her tablet.

"With limited success."

"So, we've got nothing," Mina summarized.

"But I'm sure we'll have something soon."

"As usual," Elder Ming added. Gilgamesh cleared his throat.

"Anyways, for us to reach the higher floors of the tower faster, we need a way to turn ourselves into spiritual forms and back, then we need a way to move up through the spiritual realm in a controlled manner, then we need an anchor that can move by the tower, and we need a drill to pierce into it. The Tribunal will handle the spiritual transition part."

"Yes." Elder Ming nodded smugly.

"An ancient ritual of our sect will allow us to turn those we choose into their spiritual forms, and back."

"For the controlled ascent, we have nothing," Gilgamesh continued.

"Nor do we have the anchor. But Yamato Syndicate is working on the drill."

"It will be ready by Friday," Kirishima confirmed. Gilgamesh motioned over the room.

"Which brings the matter to you. You have experience from the tower, are exceptional spellcasters, and perhaps you can come up with something." Elder Ming ran his fingers through his beard.

"I would not use the word exceptional for any of you. But there is a chance you might stumble upon a lucky idea." I fought against snorting. The Elder sure liked us. I couldn't argue with him, though. After the fight with Cassandra, I imagined the ceiling of magic had moved massively upward.

"Your organizations should support you," Gilgamesh said.

"In general, we are broadening the scope of people working on the project. That is all." After they came up with nothing in two weeks. People started rising, and we left. My phone buzzed from group chat messages. I opened them along the way. First message, from the Heavenly Emperor of Divine Radiance, Liu,'The three emperors must solve one of the problems to be worthy of our title' HK:'Meeting tomorrow morning at 7?' I wrote in.

'9: 30 at the earliest.' HK:'You don't have to bang succubi the whole night. Do it in the evening and wake up at 6 like a normal person.' I snorted. Good one.

'9: 30.' I pocketed the phone. Even that was going to be a challenge. Yeah, I didn't talk to them about my Cassandra problem. And I had no plan of doing so. I left the premises and headed for the kebab stand. Yes, I could eat something else. I chose not to. But I summoned Astarielle. She appeared in a crimson flash next to me, in her usual black cocktail dress, with nice heels and large, fake glasses on her face.

"I was in the middle of a meeting," she said. I had kept her summoned for the past two weeks to work with the local mages and analysts on getting into the tower. If they figured something out, great, if they didn't, I was going to be up to date on what not to delve into.

"How's the research going?"

"Quite well, as far as new discoveries go. Terribly when it comes to the tower access."

"What's the issue?" She stopped putting down her glasses. Research wasn't over.

"The spiritual realm isn't linear. We can't just enter it and move up. There is no up. It also moves, so any anchor point has to have that figured out. Or, more precisely, it needs to move like the Tower, which doesn't move normally through the spiritual layers."

"And we can't go into the Tower to reverse-engineer how it does it."

"Precisely." The kebab stand approached. The man preparing the food already started working on the lamb shawarma. That was my latest favorite. Still with extra garlic sauce. I didn't even like it all that much anymore, but my line of thinking was that the more garlic I consumed, the worse my blood would taste to Cassandra.

"We need to circumvent the spiritual layer's properties somehow." Circumvent… wait a minute, I had an idea.

"My summoning circumvents movement through spiritual layers."

"Except that you summon from Hell."

"Exactly." A satisfied smirk spread across my face.

"If I get everyone to Hell, I can summon them to the anchor point." She eyed me for a second.

"I don't think they're willing to die for this."

"If I can summon beings from Hell to Earth, then I should be able to reverse-summon myself or others from Earth to Hell. There's no reason why the other direction couldn't work." She paused. Oh, yeah, she knew this would work.

"It still needs an anchor point."

"One problem at a time." I got the shawarma and paid with the Golden Sands company card. My debt vanished with Cassandra, as it was formally hers, anyway.

"Or, well, two problems, because Cassandra's going to visit me tonight." Astarielle released a dark chuckle.

"To be honest, I can't get enough of that. You had me, but you weren't happy with it. My love and devotion weren't good enough for you. You had to experiment, to try something new. And now, that something new is eating you alive. Literally." I knew, all right. That made the shawarma taste worse.

"I know."

"I also enjoy how the only good card you have to play is refusing sex. But since it's your only card, you can never play it, so the mosquito isn't getting what she wants the most. It's delicious." At least someone was having a good time.

"If you knew how to help, I would appreciate it."

"You know, if I knew how, I would help you. Maybe not right now, because you haven't learned the lesson of how good I am for you yet, but I would. Yet, I don't have any fresh ideas." I started devouring the shawarma.

"Wards and physical defenses don't work because she teleports into them."

"Guardians don't work because she beats all of us other than Elsha, and the goddess isn't going to be your guardian dog." I sighed.

"So, I'm screwed."

"Well, not really, since you're getting no action. But at least you can remember the times we were together. You were getting properly screwed back then." I rolled my eyes.

"Try to focus whatever research you can influence on what's around the tower. We need something solid to start with."

"Oh, yeah, Cassandra definitely needs something solid tonight." She chuckled. She wasn't even wrong. I set the course for the Church section. Astarielle walked with me for a moment, but then figured I wasn't pokable anymore, so she left for the researchers. I didn't correct the course. That was something I postponed before, since I didn't want to face the Church people after Sarah's funeral.

But it had been two weeks, so we all could manage, even though the funeral was premature to me, as we didn't know how much of Sarah was in the artificial goddess. If the ritual was completed, sure, but it wasn't and I doubted the rushed ritual was a complete success. Judging by how Cassandra has been lately, things weren't all that fine and dandy in the tower. I still had to get her fangs off my throat. And if someone had anti-vampire tools, it was the Church.