"Let's go." Solus said, interrupting Lith's train of thought. "Next stop, the second underground floor. The Armory."
"What happened to the crystal mine?" Tista asked.
"It's right above us." Solus replied. "The Crucible will always be at the last floor because it needs both lots of world energy and the lava that I'm drawing from Mogar's mantle while the crystal mine will remain second last.
"That's because the deeper the tower gets in the mana geyser, the more abundant the energy flow is. The tower places its floors so as to optimize the consumption of world energy.
"If the Crucible and the Forge were to be swapped, the tower would need more arrays just to keep the heat from damaging the floors below. On top of that, the excess world energy would hinder our Forgemastering experiments.
"This way, instead, the power of the mana geyser gets progressively sapped by the mines that work as a buffer, making it easier for me to fine-tune the output. My hypothesis is that once the tower is fully rebuilt, it will be able to tap into the full power of any mana geyser."
"Do you mind if we take a short detour to the crystals first?" After no one objected, Lith walked inside the third underground floor alone with Solus.
He noticed that, while the most recent violet crystals he had acquired had yet to undergo any refining, the oldest gemstones in his possession, like the orc's crystal, now had a white spot at their center.
It pulsed like a heart and with every one of its beats, the white spot would reveal small veins running throughout the crystals.
"It took over three years and the Eye of Kolga to reach this point." Lith said after checking on all the red crystals that had turned into green ones already.
Just by selling them, he would earn more than 100 times what he had spent to buy them. Yet he had no need for pocket money.
"The Crucible and this mine work the same way, correct?" Lith asked, receiving a nod in reply.
"Then the number and the size of white mana crystals in our possession matters. The more we have, the faster the violet crystal will be refined. Correct?"
"Correct again." Solus replied.
'Then let's keep this a secret between us.' Lith took the four white crystals that Salaark had lent him and planted them in the soft soil of the walls.
They immediately radiated pulses of snowy energy that spread throughout the mine and sped up the expansion rate of the white areas of the violet crystals.
'I was thinking about asking Grandma to lend us a bit of Davross as well, but that would really be pushing our luck.'
'If you think that she might be jealous, then isn't it risky to show her the rest of the floors as well?' Solus asked.
'No. Salaark is a good person and she worked under Menadion. If she really was interested in this tower, she wouldn't have waited until now to seize it. She would have done it right after your mother's death.' Lith replied.
The entire conversation lasted less than one minute and then they moved onto the second underground floor.
The Armory was simply a circular room with a radius of about twenty meters (66 feet) whose thick stone walls were filled with weapon racks. Aside from those, it was completely empty.
"What kind of Armory doesn't hold a single weapon?" Raaz scratched his head in confusion.
"The tower doesn't craft artifacts, Dad. That's our role as Forgemasters and the tower does everything it can to make our job easier." Solus replied.
"No offense, but what's the point in showing us an empty room? This place is useless." Lith asked.
The Armory was the most underwhelming floor he had ever seen, but his face didn't show any disappointment so as to not offend Solus nor piss Salaark off any further.
"Kid, you have no idea of the nonsense you've just spouted." Salaark chuckled. "The Armory isn't meant to provide you with weapons but the other way around."
"Meaning?" Friya asked in confusion.
"Put War on one of the shelves and see what happens." The Guardians said.
The moment the angry blade touched the Armory's wall, the tower absorbed it into its structure, releasing pulses of crimson energy that Lith could feel connecting the artifact with the tower's core.
"The Armory is not a pointless display for weapons." Salaark said. "Everything you put on the racks is temporarily integrated with the power core, allowing the tower to replicate all of their enchantments."
"Does that mean that if Phloria were to place her Reaver there I could store two minutes' worth of spells even though I'm not the owner of the blade?" Lith asked.
"It's so much more than that." Salaark shook her head. "You could store two minutes' worth of Tower tier spells while everyone who has your permission could do the same but only up to tier five.
"What makes both the tower and the Armory great is that their effects aren't limited to the owner. Don't you remember how many apprentices Menadion had?"
"What if-?" Lith didn't dare to complete the sentence, afraid to jinx it.
"That's right." Salaark chuckled. "It's one of the reasons why Menadion tried to keep me here at all costs. She never managed to get her hands on Yggdrasill wood after I left."
Lith placed the branch of the World Tree on one of the shelves and then he opened the control panel of the tower, changing the status of all those present from guests to apprentices.
Thanks to the Amory, it was as if each one of them was holding a Yggdrasill staff, giving them clarity and inspiration.
"This is amazing!" Tista said as her brain spun at full gear, giving her insight about her Red Demon form and about how to better handle the Origin Flames. "Now we don't need to take turns with the branch anymore."
Lith thought about all the artifacts that he could put in the Armory to improve his magical and crafting abilities before remembering that he had asked Salaark to turn everything he had back into metal that was now slowly being refined in the Crucible.
'It's not a big deal. Aside from Phloria's estoc, Reaver, and her shield, Breaker, there's nothing that would have made a big difference. Most of the stuff I had was old junk.'
"Next stop, the Library." Solus brought them to the second floor of the tower that looked exactly like the name suggested.
It was a circular room with a radius of 50 meters (164 feet) with bookshelves aligned along the walls while at its center there were several long rectangular wooden tables. Each one of them could host up to eight people.
Windows took the space in-between the bookshelves, providing the room with plenty of natural light at all hours of the day.
"What does this place do?" Lith asked.
"The Library is the physical manifestation of Soluspedia." Solus replied. "It's a bit underwhelming for us, but I bet that everyone else will love it. Guys, try thinking about the Kingdom's justice system."
She took all the law books Lith owned out of the pocket dimension and put them on the shelves.
