Nadia launches into a long explanation about void beasts and their abilities full of examples and anecdotes that make it much longer than it probably needed to be. It all boils down to a pretty basic function though. The void beasts have what is essentially their own personal world within the Central Void that they can access at will. When they’re young, it’s fairly small, and Nadia explained that Trinity’s is probably no bigger than a closet at the moment, but the longer she lives, the bigger it will get.
The personal world is accessible only to the void beast and its tamer. It’s technically possible for more powerful void beasts to break in, but void beasts are so rare that there’s only a single record of that happening. On top of that, the one record is from the void beast of an Ascendant, calling into question whether it was merely due to its near-divine power, or if it was something that could happen between normal void beasts.
The important part though is that through Trinity, I have a private space that I can use for storage and shelter, and no one else can get inside. In the future, as the space expands, I may even be able to grow plants within, but turning the voidspace into something that can support life is no easy task. Despite this, Nadia strongly recommends it if I ever plan on becoming a beast tamer. Apparently, void beasts are almost a necessity for high level beast tamers, since by the time they reach the upper floors, half the beasts they’ve tamed are too large to be able to travel easily. By having a void beast, they can keep their other companions safe and hidden while traveling through inhabited towns without needing to leave them behind, and in doing so, losing a majority of their fighting power.
I have no intention of becoming a beast tamer, but the voidspace will definitely still be useful. When it gets a bit bigger, I can furnish it a bit and just have a portable hotel room so I never have to sleep out in the wilderness. If I ever end up in extreme danger, I can also hide away until it’s gone.
There are a few risks associated with the voidspace as well, but most sound manageable. The first is that once I enter, the entry location is set, and cannot be moved until I exit. If Trinity alone is within, she can move it around a bit to create a slow form of teleportation, but as soon as I enter, it’s locked in place. That means that if I have enemies and they know where I entered, they can wait right outside to attack the moment I exit.
The second is that while it’s impenetrable from the outside, it’s much less so from the inside. It’s not easy, but a skilled ki user could puncture the voidspace from within, and if they managed to do it, everything inside the voidspace would be sucked into the Central Void and never seen again. It would be suicidal for someone to do it personally, but I do need to be careful about items, because if someone manages to sneak a bomb in, I might just die.
Both these risks can be mitigated by just being careful. That can’t prevent everything, but as long as I’m not careless and I don’t make too many enemies, I shouldn’t have much to worry about.
She goes on to mention a few things that can help empower void beasts. A lot of them are just things that are good for beasts in general, but there are a few that have specific, unique effects on void beasts.
“You should probably try to find a Hundred Year Snow Ginseng,” she says. “Older is better, but at her current level, Hundred Year will do just fine.”
“What does it do?” I ask.
“Normally, extreme cold treasures like that are useful for either cultivating ice-related techniques, or for clearing and enhancing the mind. When fed to a void beast, however, it actually expands their voidspace. This is because the voidspace is tied to both their mental ability and cultivation level, and extreme cold treasures boost both. There are, of course, others, but Hundred Year Ginseng is the only thing you can find on these early Floors that’s actually strong enough to have any significant effect.”
“I see.”
I am definitely going to see if I can get my hands on one of those. If I’m stuck with Trinity for life, I’m going to take full advantage of her, and the bigger her voidspace the better. More room to move around is always good, and this way, I can put some distance between my stuff and whatever weird corpses she brings in.
By the time she finishes explaining everything, about an hour has passed since I entered, and the man on the ground– Yuri– still hasn’t moved. On my way out, I stop next to him again, watching for a few seconds as he draws in ki like a living whirlpool. At this rate, he’ll form a ki center in less than a week.
“Talented, isn’t he?” says Nadia happily. “I got lucky this time around. Though it looks like Ganyu did too. Well, good luck with your Climb, and don’t forget to come to my Lessons when they start!”
“Thank you,” I say as I exit.
The crowd outside Griffin Hall is still just as large as when I left. If anything, it’s gotten even bigger. Thankfully, Trinity has decided she wants to spend some time in her void space, so I don’t draw quite as many eyes as before, but I still gather a small entourage as I walk toward the center of the city. I recognize about half of them as the same people who were following me last time, while the other half are new. I also feel a gaze or two that don’t come from the group behind me, though I can’t tell exactly where they are.
If I had to guess, the people behind me are either hired by weaker forces, or are freelance opportunists, trying to gather and sell information, while the stealthier ones are sent by more powerful groups. There might even be more that I can’t sense at all from the most powerful groups. Regardless, I’ve drawn more attention than I thought. It’s annoying, but they haven’t bothered me yet, and it will probably die down in a few days when the novelty of the newcomers wears off.
As we get closer to the center and the massive arena comes back into view, the crowd behind grows larger, though not due to more information gatherers. Rather, it seems that our dorms are on the outskirts of the city, and the further I go, the more people there are walking around. The density of the dorms has decreased, and I see a lot more variety in the buildings around now. It doesn’t feel quite like a real city, but it’s certainly much livelier than the housing district where my dorm is.
Since I’m not really in much of a rush, I slow down as I pass a few of the more interesting places, taking time to see what’s going on. About five minutes into the walk, I see a large flat slab of stone in a field where nearly a hundred Climbers are following along with an instructor doing what looks like ki-empowered yoga. It looks like it’s open to all races, but the vast majority of the participants are humans or elves, and the instructor looks to be an elf as well. I stop to watch for a minute or so before moving on and walking another minute before something else catches my interest.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
This time, it’s an open field where a group of celestials are being taught to fly. Most are failing spectacularly, as their wings aren’t big enough to properly hold their weight without ki, but a few manage to get a dozen feet off the ground or so before they fall back down, earning approving nods from the instructor gliding above. It makes me wonder why they have wings at all if they can’t actually use them normally. Maybe they still function for gliding, even if they can’t truly fly? Regardless, it’s interesting to watch, and the efficiency of the instructor’s ki usage is more than a little impressive.
The next place I stop is a market square lined with booths and loud merchants hawking their wares. It’s actually quite an odd place, and I’ve never really seen anything like it. Everything for sale seems to be raw plant or animal byproducts, with very few selling anything processed. I notice that most of them are also wearing robes in the same style as mine, which seem to be the default robes provided by all the dorms. I guess these must all be fellow 1st Floor Climbers then?
I hesitate for a minute or so, debating whether to enter and ask for something, but then, Trinity pops into existence a few feet in front of me and starts sprinting toward a stall selling skewers made of some kind of pork. I call after her, but of course, she doesn’t know her name yet, so she ignores me and keeps running. I sigh and run after her, barely catching her before she leaps onto the counter and starts stealing food. I give a brief apology to everyone around, then move to the back of the line. I’m actually feeling a bit hungry as well, so I might as well get something to keep both of us happy.
A moment after I get in the line, I’m joined by one of the people who has been following me. It’s a young woman who feels like she’s just barely become a 1st rate martial artist, which is rather impressive for her apparent age. She looks young and innocent, and based on her appearance, I wouldn’t be surprised if she said she was 16. She doesn’t say anything immediately, but after a few seconds where apparently I stared a bit too much, she strikes up a conversation.
“Hey, are you new to the Tower?” she asks.
I debate whether or not to call out that she already knows the answer, but decide to just play along instead.
“I am,” I confirm.
“Cool! I’m Hana, nice to meet you!”
“I’m Bella,” I finally say. “Nice to meet you too.”
“Bella Tompkins?”
“Yep,” I sigh.
Hana’s eyes light up in excitement. That can’t be good. That means my name is already known, which means that, as I feared, the Batch rankings are public.
“Wow!” she says, looking very excited. “I was in the Hall of Records when your Batch entered! How did you manage to get such a high ranking so soon after entering?”
“I got lucky in the trials,” I say, shrugging.
“But your ranking went up again last night after all the trials ended. How did that happen?”
Is she serious?
I was prepared for a more delicate probing, but she’s coming in like a battering ram. She might as well just tell me she’s trying to get information from me. Maybe she’s the sacrificial lamb to test my naivete. If I just spill everything to her now, then that saves her employer a lot of time and effort in the long run. On one hand, I can just use the same lie I’m using for the instructors and say I got a foundation pill, but I really shouldn’t reward such shoddy information gathering skills.
Before I respond though, her words reminded me that I haven’t checked the rankings since I formed my ki center, so I use the command and check the faint list hovering above my ring. To my surprise, I haven’t actually moved that much. I’m sitting at 39,061, which is higher than it was last night, but only by a little over 1000. I guess any improvement from a new Climber without any apparent achievements to accomplish it would be interesting.
Still, I’m not going to just outright say it. Hana needs a serious lesson on how to properly probe for information. Her approach might have worked on someone less careful and more boastful, but if she was competent, she would have known that I wasn’t that type from our first words.
“I’ll sell you that information,” I say. “10,000 Tower Credits.”
“What?” asks Hana, taken aback.
“You’re gathering information about me to sell, right? Well, shouldn’t I, the source, get paid? 10,000 credits and I’ll tell you how my ranking went up last night.”
I have no idea if that’s a fair price or not. Probably not, since it’s the equivalent of my entire starting funds, but who knows? Maybe her backers are big spenders. They could also just ask anyone from my Batch and piece it together, so if they really did pay for this, they’d be stup-
“Deal!” says Hana, holding out her hand.
I do my best to hide my surprise as I hold out my hand to accept her handshake. A quick check on my ring confirms that my funds have doubled.
“I formed an oum core last night,” I say in a low voice.
“You did?!” exclaims Hana, glancing down at my navel in confusion.
“My instructor taught me a technique to hide it earlier today so I wouldn’t draw too much attention.”
“Oh!” says Hana. “I see.”
She nods, and I simply smile as I let her form a misconception. I had suspected as much after Nadia didn’t feel like calling attention to my core, but it seems like foundation pills are relatively well-known, meaning that everyone will just assume that I found one and used it.
“How much do you know about the forces of the Tower?” asks Hana.
“Very little,” I admit.
“Have you gotten any offers to join any of them?”
“10,000 credits.”
“Deal.”
We shake hands again.
“I’ve received a sponsorship offer from the Hatep family.”
Hana’s eyes widen again, and I feel like I may have just caused trouble for myself. Too late for regrets now. Maybe if the other big forces hear about the Hateps’ offer, they’ll start making their own offers, which will save me the trouble of having to wait to learn about what they can offer me. It might also keep the smaller forces off my back, since they know they won’t be able to compete with the Hateps.
Also, is Hana just rich and stupid, or am I severely underestimating the value of information about myself? Nothing I’ve said is even that big of a deal, and I’ve already tripled my money. Well, maybe the Hatep offer is a big deal, and Organa probably won’t be happy that I’m already spreading that I received it, but if she wanted me to keep it secret, she should have told me, so really, it’s her fault. And the oum core thing can just be explained by a foundation pill, so is it really that special?
More importantly, is there any other information about myself that I can sell? Maybe about Trinity? No, Hana has barely even glanced at the cat. Void beasts might be rare, but from the way Nadia talked, they’re also a known quantity. Trinity hasn’t shown herself to be anything but a normal void beast, so they don’t really need any information on her beyond the fact that I have her. I don’t think I have anything else I can sell them right now. Maybe the details of what happened in the first 2 trials?
“Thank you!” says Hana. “I have to go now, but is it alright if I come talk to you again later?”
Or not.
“As long as you bring more Tower Credits,” I say.
“Thank you!” she says again, bowing this time. “Bye!”
She scurries off, almost running away, earning her some jealous looks from my other tails. I turn back to the food stall that I’m waiting on, trying to ignore them. The line has moved quite a bit, but it’s still long, so it takes another five minutes before I reach the front. I buy two meat skewers for myself, and one for Trinity before turning to continue my journey. After about half an hour, we finally reach our destination: The Hall of Records.