Chapter 3: Before The Test

For what felt like a long time Laurence saw nothing but emptiness. He was all that there was, all that there could be. He just drifted in the empty space wondering what the point in this place was. After an age Laurence felt a prickling, then a slight pull, then a tug in a direction. He had nothing else to do so he followed the sensation. He had long since lost track of time at this point but after what could have been a minute, or an hour he saw a light and he headed towards it. The light turned out to be a door, just like the one in his house. The closer Laurence got to the door the more it consumed his vision, soon all he could see was the door and then he was through it.

On the other side was a monster. It looked like a 1.2 M tall butler with a terrier's head, and while it was very snappily dressed it would have made most normal men extremely uncomfortable. For some reason it was holding a pocket watch and eyeing up Laurence as he came through the door.

"One hour and fourteen minutes, twenty-three seconds. Good." The terrier put its watch away. "My name is Tony Longinex Lupe and I am the master of the first floor test room. Complete this floor and you can begin your climb as a challenger. Before any questions you might have I would like your name, age and where you came from please."

Laurence was slightly taken aback. In his village dogs couldn't talk for one thing, for another this was not what he was expecting on the other side of the door.

"Chop chop. I don't have all cycle you know."

"Err right." Said the child. "My name is Laurence Absolution, I am seven years old today and I come from Ribec village." He paused, and then said, "Can I ask questions now?"

"Oh happy birthday young sir! As a member of that clan I now understand why your time was so good. Yes you can ask questions, but please note that no matter what your test will begin tomorrow. You can take the test as often as you like but if you become too injured during your test you will immediately be returned to your place of origin." Tony was very well spoken, everything he said came out clearly, quickly and in a slightly gruff voice.

"Oh, okay." Laurence thought for a minute and then finally asked "Are you a man-dog or a dog-man?"

"What." Tony replied. He had heard many questions in the time he had been presiding over the primary test room, but this was a first. Most people were shocked and confused about the place they were in, if not that then they were curious about the test coming up. No one had bothered to ask if he or any other of his kind were more man than dog or vice versa.

"Are you a man-dog or a dog-man?"

"Yes I heard you the first time. What I meant was why ask that?"

"Then why did you ask what? It seems silly to ask the wrong question because you'll always get the wrong answer."

Laurence had no idea how infuriating his questions could sometimes be, and coupled with his interest in everything he would often get side-tracked easily. If you were not prepared he could be a tough child to deal with.

"Fine then. Why did you ask the question?" Tony said, his patience very quickly running out with the odd child in front of him. 

"Because I wanted to know the answer, silly. How many other people are here?" said Laurence, immediately following another train of thought. 

The dog-man sighed. "There are currently over a hundred people attempting to become Challengers in this dimension but we have around one thousand entrants every week. Maybe one in fifty will pass to the first floor though." Tony attempted to dissuade the child in front of him but he couldn't do it. Laurence's boundless curiosity simply meant that he wanted to know what forty-nine in fifty people would never see.

Laurence continued to interrogate Tony on everything from the inane to the profound as he was shown to the room he was allocated. Eventually Tony could take no more and said "Look. Tomorrow is your test, I have to get a few things ready for it. You are number 205 and I bid you farewell." With that Tony walked off in disgust. It wasn't that he disliked Laurence, but he could not deal with children. He had enough trouble with his own pups. "The only thing that could stand up to that child's vexing talk is a bronze mirror or a parrot." He thought as he went about his business.

The night went by uneventfully. It was the first time Laurence had not slept in his own bed in his memory, so he was quite excited. He saw books on a shelf in his room and looked through them. There were so many stories that he had so much choice in what he wanted to read. Eventually he picked out three at random, «The Tale of Gudrun and Selene», «The Fallen King» and «The Life of Maleus The Destroyer» then stored the rest in his bag. Each story told a tale that was supposedly a true story about challengers of Babel. The stories varied in tone, but something stuck with Laurence. The Fallen King was an event that happened several thousand years ago, where a creature fell from a place only described as ‘on high’ and it took the form of a man with split eyes. It sowed mistrust and wreaked destruction on anything that got in its way. Eventually three Ascendant Immortals joined forces and destroyed this being they came to call the Fallen Morning.

What piqued Laurence’s interest was that this ‘on high’ was a place that superseded Babel. Perhaps the tower was not the highest point in the universe, perhaps there was even more than Laurence thought. This idea got the young boy so excited he almost failed get to sleep. In the end he did fall asleep, and morning came quickly.

That morning Tony brought all the prospective challengers to an odd stone room with several seats. There was enough space to fit around a thousand people in the room, but only enough seats for two hundred people. At the near end of the room was a large set of windows, with each window looking into a different place. Some showed forests, some showed deserts, and a couple were underwater. At the far end of the room there was a simple stairwell which Tony quickly walked in front of.

“Good day sirs and madams! As you should all know by now, my name is Tony, and I am your first test master. This test will form three parts, and the first two are a lesson.” The beastman surveyed those around him for unruly people who might try and ignore the tests, there were usually one or two and he liked to make an example of them. “You might be thinking why do we need a lesson to get into the tower? And quite simply that is why you need the lesson. One or two of you,” He glanced at Laurence, “will have some idea what to expect, but most of you will not. Now we are not cruel people in the tower, we will not send people who cannot climb the tower up it, but because of that we need to test you. So the first test is to be able to congeal mana.

“For those of you that don’t know, around us all is mana. It is the lifeblood of everything and feeds your soul, giving rise to the heroes of yore who had magical abilities and incredible strength. If you cannot congeal it within six months then you will never be able to. This region of space is specially designed to foster the ability in people, so if you fail, it is because you are a talentless hack that got through the gateway by sheer luck.”

At this point a large man in the back exploded out in rage “How dare you!” He shouted. “I am the Saderkahn of my people and unmatched in war! I don’t need to take these stupid classes.”

Tony smiled and simply said “Well I have no idea what a Saderkahn is, but if you think you are able to then simply walk into the stairwell behind me and you can climb the tower.” He stepped aside and watched as the large man clenched his teeth and looked at the stairway. It felt like some sort of trick to everyone watching, but there was nothing between the man and the stairs. Finally he began walking towards the exit, picking up speed as he went out of fear that the strange beastman might try to stop him climbing. Tony pulled a pained face as the large man ran about four fifths of the way up the room. No one understood why until the hulking body of this braggart smashed into an invisible wall. There were several crunches and a gurgling scream as the man collapsed, his neck had impacted into his body and his jaw had been completely smashed. Most of the bones in his body were in a similar state as his jaw and it did not look like he could move. 
“That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we teach you how to use mana. In front of you there is an invisible wall that detects how much mana is circulating in a person’s body. If it is not at a certain level then you will not be able to pass through.”

Everyone looked at the pile of flesh and bone that used to be the large man and almost unanimously decided that they would take the lessons.

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