A human-sized tear opened in space and out stepped me!
Phew, opening tears across universes is taxing. I look around but I don't see any planets near me, lucky since something seemed to have tampered with the spatial tear, it suddenly exploded!
Now, I have explored many universes and I can tell you, when something goes wrong with your spatial abilities than that universe has a unique 'space'!
Of course it doesn't take me long to figure out why and I opened another spatial tear and went inside.
This universe is quite special! Instead of being one homogeneous entity covering the entire universe it has somehow split itself!
The separated space is quite special I must say, it holds a tower and it didn't seem too big either. A floor was maybe two meters and it had a hundred floors.
The auras from each floor differed a little, but I can't tell much other than the intensity so after poking around that small bubble for a bit I decided to head right in.
The first floor had a single push door, it was so simple it felt really out of place. The tower held such grand decorations and the door was but a simple wooden door?
Maybe the door reacts to the person entering, who knows?
When I entered I felt space warp and the inside was much larger than the outside. Must be where the rest of the space outside had went, I spread my senses and thankfully my strength isn't affected in this place. The size of this floor was roughly 800 km squared.
I looked around and the only land mark I could see was a tall beam at the center of this room, so I naturally went to it.
I crossed the small forest and I reached a small town, or city? It's kinda hard to tell, the infrastructure is advanced, enough to hold a city but it was small.
Entering the big town was interesting, there were guards in place but they were very much slacking off, I don't even know if they saw me enter.
Still, once inside there was people that saw me. Seeing as I was new they advised me to go to the Guild.
Walking to this Guild, I looked at the town with my own eyes instead of my divine sense, I didn't want to ruin any surprises after all! Any good traveler will know that any town will have their own fun.
At the Guild I got an explanation on this place, it seemed the place was called The Tower and it was divided into a hundred floors, must be the one I entered. The floor they were on was Floor 1 and was the newbie village.
The receptionist had me say "status open" out loud, and when I did I felt a investigation spell of some sort cast on me. Of course the strength of the spell was weak, it was roughly the strength of a Demi-god?
Nothing happened since the spell was blocked, I had to consciously tone down my divinity for it to scan me.
An interesting thing then happened! A panel appeared and I could touch it, the receptionist couldn't even see it however.
The whole thing was mostly question marks, I guess I was too strong? The receptionist said it showed the information of my body, quantified my strength and intelligence as well as displaying my skills.
The lady wanted me to write down my status onto a piece of paper but since it was mostly question marks I just made it up on random. Since I felt tired of the violence from the last universe I decided to put more points in my intelligence. For skills I left it blank since I thought it didn't matter, big mistake.
I would learn this later but skills seemed to be innate, techniques were considered to be arts and people without skills were less liked I suppose.
The girlie didn't change her tone too much but it wasn't hard to notice. She introduced the jargon in this place, the people that cleared the floors were called Climbers and they all did it because there was apparently a God on the top floor capable of granting wishes.
Of course it didn't really feel wrong I suppose, when I was outside I did sense some form of divinity from the top but it was weak, terribly weak.
Maybe it was just that the strength of this universe was weak so only such a god could be born. I will look forward to having a conversation with him then, I wonder what his reaction would be to meeting a fellow god?
I left the Guild and walked around town, it was quite interesting. It was split into two parts, a quarter of the place was turned into a slum while the other three quarters seemed to be the perfect town.
I asked around and it seems that the slums were where people who had no one to support them ended up, it wasn't really a slum because of the living environment but more of the people there.
They were people who had no one to help them unto higher floors, either the Climbers who they had relations to left them or they died.
The other three quarters were actually filled with Climbers, but they were weaker ones almost on the same level of the slum people. At least I thought so, I suppose they were a little stronger but I couldn't tell.
It seemed these Climbers were sent here to recruit the newcomers that came from the Forest, the Tower brought a big group of people in every few years. It was off season so I guess they didn't expect me?
They looked at me with some disdain but I just ignored them, truly the ignorant are fearless.
Walking around I reached another interesting building, an orphanage! I talked to the Mother there and it turned out that the Climbers that stayed here often held nights of debauchery and they dropped off their unwanted children here.
I played with the children a little and found an amusing kid, she sat away from the kids reading a book on martial arts. The art wasn't very good though, even by mortal standards I swear!
I stayed the night there and I sensed the girl sneaking out the orphanage late at night so I followed, turns out the kid was practicing the art but it was so terrible I couldn't watch and had to help her.
After that she suddenly turned really clingy, when the other kids weren't around. I asked why she wanted to train in the art so badly even to the point of hurting herself.
It seems she didn't really have a wish for the God at Floor 100, she just wanted to move on from the Floor.
The kid said she was 8 and that only 12 year olds were granted the 'System', it seems that was what that panel was called.
Well I couldn't leave the kid there and traveling was always better with a companion so I stayed with her until she was 12. She didn't have a name since the children usually decided it among themselves.
Before I got ahead of myself to name her, I decided to cast an investigation art just to see if there was anything that could help with naming her. Fellow readers would know I'm terrible with such things after all!
Surprisingly she had an ice physique, I cast a stronger investigation art and it seemed to be the most basic one. Well it wasn't a bad thing, having it was already considered good and fellow readers in our case it may even be a good thing, after all basic physiques are easy to upgrade.
I decided to name her Crystal and it seemed she quite liked it.
I stayed at the orphanage for the next 4 years, training Crystal. Nothing really happened across the years other than a group of people entering the Tower. I checked and it seemed that the people invited by the Tower didn't include any children, that's good.
When the time came she checked her status, Crystal also allowed me to see her status. I guess it was a configurable thing? Still can't touch it though but Crystal swears that she couldn't change that, a safety feature maybe?
During the 4 years I had of course gathered information and didn't sit on my ass the entire time so I could say that my knowledge of this place was okay.
When I saw her stats I was of course pleasantly surprised, her stats were double a kid at her age and level was. Hell she was still level 1 since we didn't kill any monsters.
The screen also shared her ice physique and under the skills was also the art I taught her, the Crystal Sword. It was a strength based art using ice to form a hard blade, still it fit her personality I suppose.
When I first introduced it she complained that she wanted a more gentle art but when she started learning it, man it fit like a glove.
When we left the orphanage I was dressed in a nice white robe with light blue lines and a wooden staff, Crystal dressed in a swordsman outfit and a sword that I obviously enchanted. Nothing offensive or defensive though, wouldn't want her to get too confident. Just some assistance to her control over mana.
Right the energy this universe uses is mana so I probably shouldn't have chosen int as my higher stat.
Registering at the Guild for Crystal then we went to the tall pillar in the middle of town. There wasn't a door and it had an octagonal shape.
We just needed to walk into the walls to enter the dungeon which separated the Floors from each other, anyone that clears the dungeon can enter the next Floor. Climbers can return to any Floor they've been to so that was convenient, I can return to the orphanage in the future. I'm sure I had something going with the Mother.
The first dungeon was pretty simple, only two monsters spawned in this place. A kobold and slimes.
The kobolds here were humanoid wolves but they didn't seem to have any real intelligence, maybe they were limited by the system? The slimes were had a deep blue colour and a green core.
It was easily cleared and we reached the second Floor but it really wasn't any better then the Floor before. Still, it was the first time Crystal had killed so we decided to take a rest.
After calming down in the inn Crystal said that she had levelled up and got a job, seems she got the
Jobs sometimes gave passive and active abilities and they dictated how much attribute points one would get every level.
I told her to assign her points as she liked when she asked me for help, I didn't want her to be too dependent on me after all.
We stayed the night and afterwards continued the climb.