Mirela walked up beside them with her blush finally fading as she looked up at the dissolving spire.
"How long until the ground floor disappears?"
"A few hours, based on the current rate of decay," Anya calculated. "Once the foundation dissolves, the ambient spatial distortion will violently correct itself, leaving nothing but an empty crater in the snowpack."
"Then we don’t have a lot of time," Klaus said with his voice dropping solemnly.
He uncrossed his arms, turning his gaze away from the falling tower and looking toward the massive stone steps leading up to the double doors.
Lying in the snowpack, half-buried near the base of the stairs, was a skeleton.
It was draped in a rotting frozen gray cloak.
The skull was resting against the bottom step with the bony fingers of its right hand stretched outward, frozen permanently just inches away from the threshold it had spent three entire centuries trying to reach.
"Before we leave this place," Klaus told the girls with his voice sounding completely serious. "I want to bury him."
Mirela nodded immediately with her expression softening into deep respect. Anya simply blinked, her purple eyes tracking the skeleton.
"The biological remains belong to the mortal mage who mapped the coordinates of this domain..." Anya noted quietly.
The doors couldn’t open since he wasn’t the Soul King and Ryoki had taken his soul the moment he got in vicinity of the castle.
"Yeah," Klaus said, walking slowly toward the steps. "Grand Mage Kirsches... The stubborn old bastard who chased a myth for three hundred years, and died just inches from the finish line."
Klaus stopped a few feet away from the bones. He didn’t ask Anya to levitate the body yet.
He raised his right hand. Instead of summoning soul fire or tendrils, Klaus concentrated deeply on the structure of the Soul Mana.
He willed the dense white energy to condense, harden, and take physical form.
VWOOM.
A solid, heavy, perfectly forged shovel made entirely of glowing, translucent white Soul Mana materialized in his grip.
It felt incredibly heavy and perfectly balanced as Klaus walked over to a flat quiet patch of ground near the base of a massive outer monolith, clear of the heavy snowdrifts though it was going to come there regardless.
He raised the soul shovel and drove it downward.
CRUNCH!
The blade of the shovel bit deeply into the earth.
It wasn’t normal dirt.
Because the spatial barrier had been rapidly falling, the raw environment of the Winterlands had begun to violently clash with the magical soil of the dungeon.
The ground was a dense mixture of freezing white snow and pitch-black, magically saturated sand.
Klaus heaved, tossing the first scoop of black sand and snow aside.
"Hm!"
He worked with brutal efficiency with his muscled arms driving the glowing shovel into the permafrost again and again until he had carved a perfectly rectangular, six-foot-deep trench into the earth.
He walked over to the stairs as he gently and carefully gathered the brittle, frozen bones of the old mage, wrapping them securely in the rotting gray cloak so they wouldn’t scatter.
He carried the light bundle to the trench and lowered it respectfully into the bottom of the grave.
’There you go old man... right next to what you wanted, I would have buried you inside but it’s disappearing.’ Klaus thought as he reached into his leather supply bag resting near the crates.
He pulled out the leather-bound spellbook, the journal filled with the mad ramblings, the maps, and the desperate hopes of a man who had dedicated his entire existence to finding this tower.
Klaus didn’t open it this time though as he leaned down, placing the heavy book squarely on top of the wrapped skeleton’s chest.
He stood back up, gripping the handle of the glowing white soul shovel.
He looked down into the grave with the howling wind whipping his silver hair across his face.
"You know..."
Klaus drove the shovel into the pile of displaced earth. He scooped up a heavy load of the pitch-black sand and freezing snow.
’I want to be like you...’ Klaus thought silently, staring down at the bones.
FWHUMP!!
The heavy mixture of black sand and snow hit the bottom of the grave with a muffled heavy thud, partially covering the gray cloak.
Klaus dug the glowing blade into the earth again, lifting another heavy load.
He remembered his life on Earth. When Artemis Online was down and gone, before the second one came... he remembered waking up every single day at four in the morning, dragging his exhausted aching body to a garbage job that paid him absolutely nothing, taking disrespect from a boss who hated him, just to survive another miserable week.
Honestly all that along with the death of everyone was the reason for that crushing emptiness of giving up on his dreams because reality was too heavy.
’Someone who chased their dream right until the very last breath.’
FWHUMP!!
The sand covered the heavy leather spellbook, burying the old mage’s legacy in the dark earth.
Klaus’s jaw clenched with his grip on the shovel tightening until his knuckles popped.
He scooped again.
He looked over his shoulder.
He saw Mirela standing near the crates with her hands clasped together, watching him with devotion and he also saw Anya standing beside her.
’Except I’m actually going to get mine.’
FWHUMP!!
The trench was half full.
Klaus’s glowing silver eyes burned with an intense resolve.
He wasn’t the weak, spineless victim anymore... He wasn’t the guy who just took whatever miserable hand the universe dealt him and complained about it... He had ripped power directly from the jaws of a god, and he was never, ever letting it go.
’I’m going to make the people who care about me happy.’
FWHUMP!!
The grave was almost entirely filled.
The howling wind was picking up, blowing fresh snow across the dark mound, beginning to bury it naturally.
Klaus took a deep breath with the freezing air filling his incredibly strong lungs.
’I’ll do anything. I’ll live this second life to the absolute fullest.’
FWHUMP!!
Klaus tossed the final heavy scoop of black sand and snow directly over the top of the mound, perfectly leveling the grave with the surrounding earth.
He patted it down firmly with the flat of the glowing blade.
’Rest in Peace, Grand Mage Kirsches.’
The final scrape of the shovel echoed quietly against the stone monolith as a sudden gust of Winterlands snow blew across the courtyard, sweeping over the fresh grave, painting the black sand entirely white, sealing the old man’s resting place forever.
Klaus opened his hand.
The heavy white soul shovel instantly dissolved, breaking apart into a mist of pure mana that completely faded into the cold air.
He stood in silence for a long moment, staring at the unmarked grave. He had paid his respects and the past was buried.
Klaus turned around, his broad shoulders squared with his glowing silver eyes locking onto Mirela and Anya waiting by the supplies.
The Endless Tower was steadily fading into nothingness above them, the dark stone breaking apart into light particles, but the ground-level reality of their situation remained brutal.
They were in the middle of a frozen wasteland, surrounded by hostile packs of starving abominations, and they needed to consolidate every single resource they had before making the trek back to civilization.
His gaze landed on a massive snow-covered mound of shattered timber and twisted iron resting near the edge of the courtyard.
It was the pulverized completely wrecked remnants of the old mage’s original supply carriage.
’It seems something damaged it, the activation of the tower? I’m not sure it was that damaged when we arrived.’
"Alright," Klaus muttered with his deep voice cutting through the ambient howl of the blizzard. "Before we get our own ride sorted, we need to strip the remaining fat off this place."
He didn’t want to walk over there and dig through a mountain of frozen, splintered oak with his bare hands.
He had a literal army of harvested souls and configured entities resting inside the dark cavern of his chest...
It was time to start delegating the manual labor.
Klaus closed his silver eyes for a fraction of a second. He turned his focus entirely inward, diving past the thudding nuclear reactor of his divine core, and reached into the dark depths of his Soul Vessel.
He bypassed the frozen, unconfigured statues of the elite guards and mutated wolves he had slaughtered, searching for the single node of crackling energy he had manually reconstructed the night before.
He found it instantly.
Klaus opened his eyes and raised his right hand, his palm facing the open, freezing air.
CRACK-ZAP!
A blinding, high-voltage arc of pure blue plasma suddenly erupted from his collarbone. The air pressure instantly dropped as the smell of burning overpowering the smell of the snow.
The erratic bolt of lightning didn’t dissipate into the ground; it spiraled rapidly through the air before violently condensing into a tiny, physical form hovering directly over his shoulder.
Sparky materialized with an angry high-pitched buzz of her plasma wings.
The chibi-sized Lightning Fairy was wearing her tiny dark woven tunic with her spiky yellow hair bristling in aggressive blue sparks.
"It’s freezing out here, meatbag!" Sparky shrieked immediately, crossing her tiny arms and shivering with exaggerated dramatic flair. "I am a creature of pure, superheated atmospheric friction! Why did you pull me out of your comfy soul into a literal freezer?!"
’Before it was as dark as a graveyard... Now it’s comfy? Women.’
Klaus didn’t answer her right away as he casually turned his head to look at Mirela and Anya.
Both the demi-human maid and the six-year-old Shinigami were standing near the salvaged supply crates, looking at him as if he had completely, irrevocably lost his mind.
"What?" Klaus asked deadpan, gesturing lazily toward the tiny complaining elemental on his shoulder. "We have to search if there’s anything good in there. I’m not digging through that pile of splinters to look for loose copper when I have a perfectly good flying flashlight..."
Mirela blinked, slowly shaking her head.
"Master, that is a volatile elemental spirit of destruction. You are using her to... rummage through garbage?"
"That’s what I’m saying!"
"It’s resource management," Klaus corrected smoothly, completely immune to their judgment. He turned his face toward the fairy. "Sparky. Fly over to the old man’s carriage. Dig through the debris as I want to know if he left any hidden coin pouches, alchemical catalysts, or emergency rations tucked under the floorboards before we abandon it entirely."
Sparky glared at him, her glowing blue eyes narrowing into lethal, tiny slits.
"I am a weapon of devastation!" she screamed, pointing a tiny, sparking finger directly at his nose. "I bring the wrath of the heavens down upon mountain peaks! I incinerate armies! I am not a magical metal detector for a dead man’s trash!"
’I haven’t seen you incinerate armies before...’
"Just look through the pile," Klaus sighed, entirely unfazed by her tantrum, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Consider it paying rent for the physical body. Now go."
Sparky let out a furious high-pitched vibrating huff.
She buzzed her lightning wings so aggressively that the snow beneath Klaus’s boots actually melted from the static discharge.
She shot off his shoulder like a high-caliber bullet, zipping across the white snowdrifts in a streak of blue light, heading straight for the wrecked carriage.
Klaus crossed his heavily muscled arms over his broad chest, watching her hover over the shattered timber.
Sparky was not gentle. She kicked broken, frozen wooden boards aside with her tiny bare boots with her face twisted in a permanent scowl.
"Hmph!"
She dove into a shattered supply chest, sending a cloud of sawdust and frozen rags flying into the air.
She zipped under a bent iron axle, peering into the dark crevices of the ruined cabin.
For three entire minutes, she rummaged through the disaster zone.
She found nothing... there was no hidden gold and no rare alchemical herbs. It was just frozen completely useless splinters, shattered glass vials, and ruined, rock-hard linen.
Her volatile unstable elemental temper began to rapidly flare.
’I can’t believe he made me search here for nothing...!’
The blue sparks dancing through her spiky blonde hair grew thicker, brighter, and significantly more violent.
Klaus watched her slowly rise out of the wreckage, floating about ten feet in the air above the carriage.
She didn’t turn around to look at him and she didn’t fly back to report her findings as she just hovered there, her tiny hands balling into tight fists.
"I think..." Mirela murmured nervously, her tail swishing behind her.
"She has reached a point of critical emotional destabilization," Anya analyzed.
’I really have to get her to speak regular English, is this how they spoke in the old days?’
Sparky didn’t even bother to warn them. She simply raised both of her tiny hands above her head.
The air around the wreckage instantly distorted, the atmospheric pressure dropping so violently that it made Klaus’s ears physically pop as a blinding dense orb of pure, supercharged blue plasma violently condensed between her palms.
KRA-BOOM!
The sound was apocalyptic.
Sparky didn’t just strike the carriage... she brought down a full-force, unmitigated, high-voltage lightning bolt point-blank into the center of the debris.
The flash of light was so incredibly bright that it temporarily bleached the Winterlands landscape a blinding white.
’So the reconstructions I made to the amount of power she could release at full force is also showing...’ Klaus thought.
He had made sure she could release a high amount of power in one go though when he tried to increase it higher, her body had began decomposing so he stopped...
There were limits to a soul after all, perhaps he could reconstruct a bigger soul.
The splintered oak timber, the bent iron axles, the frozen rags, and the snowdrifts beneath the carriage didn’t just catch fire.
They were instantly vaporized as the intense heat of the plasma strike completely eradicated the physical matter, turning the entire pile of wreckage into a massive expanding ball of screaming fire and superheated steam.
In less than three seconds, the fire burned out, leaving absolutely nothing behind but a smoking blackened glass-smooth crater in the snow.
Sparky lowered her hands.
She fluttered back across the courtyard, unbothered by the sheer destruction she had just caused, and landed heavily back on Klaus’s collarbone.
She crossed her tiny arms, giving him a smug, defiant, bratty sniff.
"There was nothing in there," Sparky reported flatly.
Klaus stared at the smoking crater, his jaw locked tight. He slowly turned his head to look at the tiny fairy sitting on his shoulder.
"I told you to search it," Klaus sighed. "I didn’t tell you to nuke it from orbit."