^^ Hobgoblins ^^

Unlike the ruined exterior of the tower would lead you to believe, the Lift rose smoothly, the Conjuration Rune carved into the top portion of the Cage lifting the entire system at a steady pace. The whole tower was barely forty meters tall, having only three above-ground levels and one of those being the Grand Hall, so it was not a long ride; only perhaps a minute or so. When the Lift stopped, I took a moment to scan the room with my Mana Sense, then another to sketch the Rune from the Lift; used properly, it would allow me to fly with impunity, not just leaping through portals and falling with style, so I was more interested in that than most anything else here at the moment. The elevator shaft went up one further, but I decided that it probably went to the roof, given the height remaining of the tower.

Opening the grate revealed a small room covered in silver, running in cords and lines down from the massive crystal embedded into the ceiling, some fifteen meters above me. A single chair sat in the center, populated only by a skeleton and staring with empty eye sockets at a glowing crystal plate in front of it, upon which was a drawing of the tower, marked with red at all the places there was apparent damage.

"If you're an Undead, I'd really appreciate a warning? I'm a flighty creature, I don't appreciate jump-scares, and I will legitimately destroy this place if a spider or skeleton moves towards me!" I warned the skeleton sternly, drawing my sword and pointing it at him while carefully examining the rest of the room.

"Well, we wouldn't want that, would we?" A voice came from the crystal stand in front of the skeleton, slightly distorted due to the cracks in the edges of the plate.

"... is this communication magic, or are you possessing a magic crystal?" I narrowed my eyes slowly at it, tracing the mana within to the crystal on the ceiling, as I'd expected.

"Sharp Eyes... but what else would I expect from a young Elven ArchMage with a Mana Sea bigger than my entire Tower? My name is Evander; you are within my Tower. You are trespassing."

"You're Evander Rockwell?" I hummed, deciding against correcting him, because he might have a way of blocking my Field Walk, as an ArchMage of Conjuration, and approached the crystal plate, examining the entire thing while waiting for him to answer.

"I notice you ignored my statement about trespassing."

"Dead people don't own property; I notice you didn't confirm your name." I fired back, touching the plate and flinching when the runes on the back lit up and changed the image on the surface, showing the front of the tower. "Illusion Runes..." the image went back to normal when I removed my hand, prompting another hum of interest.

"... Are all elves as Arrogant as you?"

"First: Racist. Second: Yes." I shrugged, pressing the room I was currently in and smiling at the view of myself, as well as the invisible human man standing near one side of the room. "Found you... I wonder how you survived this long, Evander? Are you a descendant of Rockwell? Or just some Conjuration Mage who found the way in like I did, and decided to claim the place?" I asked, looking up directly at his face.

The image showed him crossing his arms, but I sensed nothing, yet, not even with Mana Sight. "You couldn't be further from the Truth; ArchMage Rockwell was my Master, and I am indeed an Undead. I reside within the Crystal above your head, but that skeleton is of the late ArchMage Rockwell."

"Ahh... so you're, what, a novice Conjuration Mage? Intermediate?" I hummed, turning to view the skeleton.

"I am a Master of Conjuration, thank you very much!"

"Hmm..." I nodded, turning the vision to the top floor, where I was surprised to find a small bedroom and study, and its occupant, likely the 'Master of Conjuration, Evander', slumped in the desk chair, skeletonized much like his master. "Ah, there you are... I wonder, if I salt and burn your bones, will your soul cease to exist? Or is it entirely a quantum construct captured with Summoning Magic, untethered to your Mortal Coil?"

"The latter, fortunately; I haven't been able to leave the Tower, or even clean up my bones, but I am also capable of going anywhere in the Tower instantly, what with me being connected to it now. It's a rather nice compromise, though the Monsters constantly being Summoned in the Lower Levels means I can't order the Golems to repair the damage to the Tower, because if they get damaged, they rampage, and that never ends well."

"I was wondering why you hadn't done any repairs yet... but the construction of Golems has been banned for over six hundred years, Evander. You haven't been dead that long." I raised an eyebrow at him, keeping my peripheral vision on the panel to see him.

"And? Golems were banned because of their tendency to go wild, but as construction workers they are quite efficient. Now, I propose something of a trade: you clean out the monsters below the tower, and I will allow you to reside here. I may even be helpful as a security feature, as I can sense everything within the tower, including any intruders, and I have a near-infinite computation speed, operating far above and beyond the limits of my flesh. In return, you must bring more creatures here to die, so that the Magic Crystal remains powered, and I remain... Alive, as it were."

"Your offer is based on the faulty premise that I would want a possibly homicidal spirit in the same tower as me, the faulty premise that I am here looking for a home, and the faulty premise that there's any benefit at all to me keeping this tower operational. Enlighten me to any such benefits, and we'll talk. Until then, shut up and let me do my research, the original reason I came here." I waved a hand dismissively at him, and looked back at the device which allowed me a view of the entire Tower.

After a moment of silence and curiosity, I changed the plate to looking down at the lower level, but recoiled immediately from the scene of horrific death; thousands of goblin corpses were piled up on one side of a room, while ten or so much larger goblins sat beneath a summoning circle and caught the one that suddenly fell through, ripping its head off and tossing it over to the pile of corpses, along with a branch from the small fire they had nearby.

I looked away from the resultant firebomb -made of oily goblin bodies and the pressure of a thousand bodies to assist its combustion,- before it scorched my irises, and shivered. "So, your problem is Hobgoblins? Good to know."

"Unfortunately, that is but one of the four completed 'Floors'; my master wanted to create a trap to slaughter monsters in a manner which would decrease their population without wasting the Materials which humanity gathered from their corpses, but the goblins simply overpowered the Golems with sheer numbers, so they never got past that floor to clear out the second and below..." Evander sighed, explaining begrudgingly.

"Mm. He should've put a Golem Creator on every floor, to commission new ones when the old one died, as well as some sort of Transmutation Enchantment to separate the materials he needed to sell, then transport them to the surface." I shook my head disappointedly at the weak planning, and looked back at the goblin floor; the Hobgoblins were carrying the now-toasted remains of the other goblins to a set of stairs that led deeper, tossing them in by the dozens. "And let me guess, they've built their own self-sufficient ecosystem?"

"Correct on all points... does this mean you're interested in helping me?"

"No, it means it irritates me that your master didn't consider the intelligence of monsters; many of them possess the basic knowledge necessary to establish a Power Structure, meaning they can organize and thus increase their strength exponentially. Their breeding rate is also an issue... and are those Hobgoblins Female?" I tilted my head to get a better look, but couldn't quite understand what I was seeing.

"Indeed; my master decided they the best way to halt monsters from overpopulating was to remove their Breeding Pairs. Considering the threat of Goblins, Orcs, Ogres, and Paeans has fallen over the past three centuries to nearly a fiftieth of what it was, I'd say it was a success."

"What's a Paean?" I frowned, looking at the fourth floor for confirmation, but I only saw a large clearing of lush green grass with a lake in the middle; above the lake were two thick steel pipes, one releasing a trickle of filthy waste water and the other releasing a deluge of clean water every few minutes. After a few minutes, a grate on the ceiling opened, and the body of a female ogre, all twenty feet of her, fell out into the lake.

"Just watch." Upon contact with the water, there was an explosion of activity, as tiny shrimp-like creatures swarmed the corpse and began spitting acid onto it, dissolving the corpse, -bones, metal earrings, and all,- into nothing in mere seconds.

"Oh... okay... so those things are your main problem, not the rest of the monsters? The rest will sort themselves out and are actually managing fairly well, but those shrimps have no predators, and they aren't eating each other, I don't think, so they're just multiplying endlessly?"

"Correct. My thought was poison, but I can't even acquire any, much less administer it. Also, while they're generating an ungodly amount of Mana from all those deaths, none of it is reaching me; the silver wires which connect the crystal to the tower have been severed below the Ground Floor, meaning I can see everything down there, but I can't control any of the Runes which I would normally have control over; this including, of course, the Golem Creation Circles!"

"Ahh, so it wasn't that your master didn't place them in there, he just didn't think that anyone would destroy the vibrantly shining silver cables?" I asked dryly, looking at each of the floors individually and following the water and waste water which went into the other floors; they both started in the Goblin floor, so it wouldn't require me to challenge the Orc Warband that had formed on the second floor, or the Ogre Tribe on the third floor to pour poison into the little Shrimp Habitat.

"Well there's no need to be rude, but... yes. Anyway, All I need is for you to poison the Paeans, reconnect those silver cords on the first floor, and I can use the resultant Mana to build more Floors! With a good enough system, we won't have to worry about monsters as much anymore; I was thinking about replacing the Paeans with Slimes, which also use Acid, but I'm not sure..."

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself, Evander. Firstly, by poisoning most of the Paeans, the water which goes to the other floors will poison them as well, effectively culling the population. Secondly, when they're mostly dead, I repair the silver cords. That's what you want, yes?" I reeled him back swiftly, cautioning him from counting his chickens, so to speak.

"That is correct... what do you want?"

"That's a good question... I suppose selling all those materials wouldn't be too bad of a business opportunity, but I don't have any passion for such things; I just want to lower the Monster Populations without driving them to extinction... which means we'll have to summon more types of monsters, but with those we'll have to make sure they have enemies to fight; not their natural predators, but something equal that would offer a challenge. So you need to design the system to retrieve the crafting materials from the corpses, while leaving behind whatever we don't need to allow the ecosystem to continue to flourish, and also you'll need to keep a breeding pair of every type of monster on ice, in order to prevent us from driving anything to extinction, like I assume happened to those Paeans. Any objections?"

"To you becoming my Boss? A few minor objections; I demand an equal working relationship, but everything else made sense. Of course, I don't really care about driving monsters to extinction, -given that they are themselves outsiders to the ecosystem created by Mana-Based mutations in normal animals and people,- but the economy is reliant on their materials, so killing them all off would be potentially disastrous."

"You, the elf-hating spirit who needs my help, would like to be an equal partner in this deal? How would that even work?!? Do you not realize that you need me, but I do not need you?!?" I chuckled, amused by the prospect of working with a Spirit.

"I don't hate elves, firstly, and secondly, you can't control the tower without me, a Conjuration Mage!!! So we need each other, thank you very much!!!"

"I can, in fact, control this tower, considering I am an Intermediate Conjuration Mage myself; you, on the other hand, have only one use, and that is to suck up the energy of the crystal above my head, which could go to a thousand other things that are far more important than having a Spirit control the tower, instead of this handy console that your predecessor designed and used." I remarked dryly, shaking my head at him and touching the panel again, opening the 'Blueprints' of the Tower. "What's this? An Alteration Menu?!? I wonder how that works!!! How ever will I learn how to use such a User-Friendly System without the help of my definitely-homicidal Spirit Companion?!?"

He crossed his arms, frowning at me angrily. "There's no need to be so nasty about it. And I'm not Homicidal, but you're quickly altering my perception on the issue."

"Ha! And you suppose I'll just take your word for it? No, not even a little bit." I shook my head and held out a hand, Summoning Laplace.

Immediately recognizing his breed, the spirit began to panic. "Wait, Wait, hold on, there's no need for that, you don't need to kill me!!! Just make me a Golem Body and send me into it with a summoning spell and I'll be on my day, you'll never see me again!"

"Oh? You could possess a Golem all along? Why haven't you?" I hummed, curious now, while Laplace curled around my shoulders.

"All of the Creation Circles are below the Tower, so that they could never go berserk and kill us up here! Just activate one of those circles, then summon the Golem to the Grand Hall once you're back up top; then I can possess it, and be on my way!"

"Hmm... Golems guided by Human Intellect would be an incredibly Potent work force, wouldn't they?" I glanced at the ruins of the city through the window, calculating the amount of farmable land I could harvest with golems.

"Are you suggesting that I work for you as a Foreman?" He asked slowly and incredulously, the image in the crystal plate staring at me in shock.

"Do you have something better to do? Would you rather just have a Golem body and wander around the forest until some adventuring Mage killed you? You'd never even be able to approach a City-State as a Golem, so wouldn't you rather help me build one?" I replied reasonably.

"... I suppose I would like to see my Master's City rebuilt... and you clearly have no respect for history, so it'll be my job to make sure it's recreated properly..."

"To be clear, I meant building a New City; reliving the past helps no one, and I have a rather specific goal in mind. But yes, a new Era of Prosperity will come to this ruined heap of failed potential, with or without you. What's your choice?" I pet Laplace as he stared at the crystal above me with rapt attention, making sure he didn't destroy it.

"Well, any revitalization is good revitalization, and I can't imagine you have any sort of untoward intentions, so... again, I'll agree to be your partner, but I won't allow an Intermediate Mage to be my Boss."

"The same Intermediate Mage you mistook for an ArchMage? That one? When I die, a few hundred years from now, we can have this conversation again. Call me your partner if you want until then, but I have a vision for this Ruin, and if you deviate from that, I will not hesitate to do this on my own; hows that sound?"

"Sounds like you're a total asshole who needs a reality check, but I understand your point clearly, yes. I don't have the power here, unfortunately, and I do want the city rebuilt. If you really intend to do that, I will cooperate."

"Good! So, question: what's the limits of your perception? Just the Tower, or the City as well?" I asked, sending Laplace back to his Nest.

"Just the Tower; I can see some of the city from here, but that doesn't mean I can actually interact with it. I can't see inside or around things, and I can't access the few remaining Runes at all."

"What types of Runes?"

"... mostly Restoration, I believe? The ground here is barren because of the cold and all the trees taking all the nutrients from the soil, but my Master had Restoration Mages place Runes to bolster our fields' crops, in what few fields we had. There were also Illusion Runes to hide us from monsters, but those were the first to go, due to sabotage."

"I see... renewing those will be Step Two, I suppose... so let me clarify: you use the water from the Paean's to feed the monsters, as it's loaded with literally all the nutrients they need, but at the end of the day, it's simply too much, and it can actually kill them, can't it?" I frowned at the barren patch of snow and ice that was likely the field he mentioned.

"That is correct."

"And so that water could be used to enrich the soil of a field? And still have enough nutrients in it to keep the monsters alive?"

"... that seems to entirely depend on how many fields you want? We could turn the whole city into a field and give it nutrients, but we don't have enough Runes for that much land."

"So we'll get some more... how difficult is that?" I shrugged, teleporting back to my room in Hightower.