Chapter 800

    “Alright, let’s stop focusing on how many organs I may or may not currently have and get this over with,” Ben told them as he pushed open the door, letting them into the second floor of the tower waiting just beyond and finding a far simpler space than the last one.

    While the area itself was broad, there really wasn’t much to it. The first thing they saw going in was a new door in front of them, closed and locked with the way out being both obvious and far grander than that first sight. A mountain of keys sitting behind it.

    “Oh, this is gonna take a while,” Jake muttered as he and the rest put two and two together, the fact that they were going to have to find the correct key to get out seemed blatantly obvious while Ben looked up to the sky before commenting.

    “More like two hours,” He told them while pointing up, with a countdown already going. In that small span, they were going to need to sort through a pile of keys so large it towered into the sky above them, waiting to be dug through to find the presumably single one that would let them out.

    “A needle in a haystack,” Amy muttered, with Vasta in agreement.

    “Then no time to waste figuring this out. Let’s look at the door first, see if there’s any clues to narrow this down.”

    Ben was already walking over, feeling motivated as he examined it and gave the details he could see to the rest of them since it was already falling within his specialty. There was magic built throughout the door blocking their exit. Branching, intersecting paths of what he was seeing matched a handful of enchanting systems he knew, only placed almost nonsensically, with most of them overlapping where the central key was going to want to go.

    With that already being one of the first clues. The keyhole itself was thick enough that any of the smaller options would be automatically out, meaning they could already judge by eye if they wanted to if there wasn’t instantly a better path to pursue.

    “The way these enchantments are all meeting in the middle, they all look incomplete,” Ben muttered, thinking out loud but still getting the attention of his companions. “From the way it’s built, I’d say we’re looking for a key that has the missing segments on it, meaning that any keys without any placed magic are going to be automatically out.”

    “It’s a start,” Vasta nodded. “Thera, Jake, with me. We’ll start sorting this pile. Ben, for now, stay on the door and see if you can figure anything else out. Amy, stay with Ben in case he needs any help.”

    Instructions given, the three non-affinitied mages moved, with swaths of keys flying through the air as their magic and mana sense were used in tandem to try and quickly sort that gargantuan pile while Ben continued to stare at the door itself.@@@@

    “Well, is there anything I can help you with?” Amy asked while he just shook his head.

    “Not sure yet. Give me a couple minutes. This feels... solvable.”

    But what could I still need? I’ve got the shape, I’ve got the enchanting structure, what else could there be? Is the door somehow examining the key itself and finding that I’ve got something wrong? If that’s the case then what could it be judging, unless...

    An idea, one that led him to walking over to the others as they frantically sorted, feeling every second of their time limit despite not even ten minutes having yet passed as he went to the pile of discards that held no magic and felt them all with his material sense.

    “So it’s their makeup that’s the difference,” He muttered at what he’d felt. Every key there was the same complex blend of materials, unique enough that he couldn’t immediately identify what they were supposed to be but that didn’t matter. He practically had an endless supply before him as he grabbed one and reshaped it, applying the correct enchantment fragments once more and with confidence, slid it into the door and felt the lock give as he turned it, the way out of the second trial opening up to them.

    He was beaming with the success, waiting for reactions from the others that never came and forced him to look back to the other four, still focused on finding whatever original key the trial held.

    “Uh, hey guys, you can stop that now.”

    “Hmm, what?” Vasta asked as her and the rest of their eyes were pulled to him, getting a far more surprised reaction with what she saw. “...What?”

    “Made a key, it wasn’t too hard,” He shrugged.

    “You just made a key? That was good enough to get out of this?”

    “Yeah, I mean, even if the gods who rule over non-affinitied magic gave their input in designing it, from what I understand it was the crafting gods who actually made the towers. Is it really so surprising that a few of the floors give options where you can make your way out of them?”

    He’d even experienced a floor like that in the past as well back when he’d finished the fifth floor of the earth tower by sculpting a statue of Helori, but he still enjoyed the look of dumbfoundment the older mage was trying to hide.

    “Well, I suppose when you put it that way it seems reasonable, I was just prepared for that to take a bit closer to the end of our time limit.”

    “Then I’d say what we got counts as a win. Now come on, we basically just had our last break so we all should be fine to go into the next floor, right?”