I blink the message out of my vision and pull out my Class Card. Clutter does the same, and Pearl turns away from whatever she’s working on to stare over my shoulder. The quest tab shows a bunch of dots under the progress. Does that mean… something’s actually happening to the city?

  A distant rumble rolls through my body. I glance up and into the distance as all the snow comes to a perfect stop, sitting on the walls like… well, like snow should. Multiple twinges of magic itch at my mind, all of them far too powerful for them to come from any kind of person. Kind of like hearing a tornado touch down miles in the distance.

  “What’s going on?” Clutter asks as he lowers his Class Card. “Is the city changing?”

  “That’s my best guess. But until the quest updates, we can’t know for sure.” I send my Class Card away and lean against the window to get a better look. “I can’t see anything changing. So whatever’s happening, it’s gotta be far away.”

  “Or inside the walls themselves.” Pearl adds. “Should we go check on the roots? Maybe they’ve dug far enough to… I don’t know… connect to the quest?”

  I briefly consider it, but… something holds me back. There’s magic in the air. Far more than what’s safe. Even the snowflake high in the air is twitching uncontrollably, but the snow doesn’t move with it at all. Whatever magic is in the city has intense disruptive properties.

  “No. We stay here until it passes.” I decide. “Unless either of you want to risk it?”

  Clutter vigorously shakes his head. Pearl shrugs.

  “I don’t think it’ll hurt us, but I can’t say for sure, so this is probably the right call.” Pearl says. “Good thing we took the constructs inside. I bet this would’ve done some serious damage to them.”

  I nod in agreement. The magic outside… it’s… oh. Wait. I can feel the magic outside with my awareness. That means it’s so strong it’s slightly seeping through the tower. Yeah, we’re definitely not going outside until this is done.

  Anchoring complete.

  Subquest progress: tower anchorer.

  The city has become irradiated with deadly magics. It will begin damaging you after a number of seconds equal to ten times your clearance level while outside and unprotected.

  Only the inside of the walls remain safe. Yet it would seem that the anchoring has changed the walls as well. Perhaps looking into the differences will provide insight into a way forward.

  …

  Subquest complete.

  Reward: complete tower access.

  As I finish reading, the notification collapses in on itself until nothing but a holographic black square remains. Flaring grey magic etches a simple symbol onto the top–a circle with a dot inside. I hold it up to the light, and I can see a ton of folded layers pressed together to make this thing.

  “Do you think this is tower access?” I wonder aloud.

  Clutter holds up his own square, which sparkles with blue and brilliant white. It, too, has the same symbol on it. He turns it around a few times with an inquisitive look on his face, then slowly nods.

  “This is a system upgrade. I… think it’s temporary, though.” He holds out his Class Card, then presses the square to it. “Oh, yep, this is tower access. Wait, can I… ooh, I can! Look!”

  He taps his Class Card, and a soft click sounds from behind me. I turn to the source; the anchor catalyst, which is now sticking a few inches out of the ground. More noises echo from inside of the tower as the concentric circles rise from the floor, extending the anchor further and further out as they rise. Clutter walks over to it and pulls the anchor free with a grin, then grimaces as the horribly sterile smell comes right back.

  “Ick. Yuck. Go away.” He pulls up his shirt to cover his nose, sticks the catalyst back in the divot, and presses something on his Class Card. The circles retract, taking the catalyst and the smell with them. “At least we know we can get it back out. And where the smell came from. What kind of permissions do you have?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Probably the same as yours?”

  Clutter shakes his head. “It says I have complete inner-tower control, and that that’s exactly half of the total controls. Which means you have the other half!”

  Other half? I look down at my Class Card, press the square to it, and watch as it sinks into my card like a stone into a thick bog. Lines of magic trace across the surface of my card, and it forces me back to my main page. Then the magic trails to my map tab, opens it, and zooms in on our exact position.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  A taller hologram of the tower springs out at me like a pop-up book made by an asshole. I flinch away as the thing almost takes my eye out, but after that initial burst, it sinks down to about an inch tall. Perfectly representing the tower itself, and… in a small radius around it, snow appears. That upgrade didn’t just give me tower access; it looks like it improved my map around the tower as well.

  Yunrov District Tower Access: Outer.

  Access: All(Change).

  Detection Range: Maximum(Change).

  Opacity: 99%(Change).

  Current Draw: Mana(Change).

  Half of the current functions are assigned to another.

  Remaining functions offline.

  I blink at the admittedly small list of controls. None of them are immediately obvious to my just-woke-up brain, but they’ve all got prompts next to them for me to fiddle with. And one of Clutter’s prompts obviously let him open up the anchor circles, so let’s give it a shot. Starting with… access.

  My finger taps the prompt, and all the text disappears–only for some new stuff to take its place moments later.

  Current Access options: All/Identification.

  Blacklist and Whitelist unavailable until further notice.

  Alright. I’m going to assume that means my choices are ‘anyone can come in’ or ‘only people with tower access can come in’. At this very moment, I see absolutely no reason why I wouldn’t shift it to the much safer option. So I do.

  The tower creaks. Clutter tilts his head to look at the ceiling, and the symbol from the constructs appears to perfectly ring it. He yelps as a grey curtain falls over him, then turns to me as the exact same thing happens.

  “You just did that, right?”

  “Pretty sure I did. And now nobody can come in here but us.” I back out of the option, then press on whatever ‘draw’ means. “Keep watching the horizon. I’m pretty sure something’s going to happen to the city sooner or later.”

  He slowly nods and goes back to looking out the window, though now his focus is split between his Class Card and the city. Not that I can blame him for it; the fact that we now have control over this tower isn’t just interesting; it raises a lot of potential questions about how the quest is going to go from now.

  Because, theoretically, this tower is now completely impenetrable. That’s a great thing for holing up, but it also means we could lock someone in. Or someone could lock themselves in their own tower with all the loot if they have control over the access. Not me, obviously, but when we find other people, we’ll have to ask which one of them has control over what parts of their tower.

  Current Draw Options: Mana/Energy/Health/Air.

  If oxygen levels drop too low, this will automatically shift to draw air.

  …Okay… so… apparently this works like ventilation, but with things other than air. I press ‘energy’ to see what that does, and a twinge of awareness instantly drills into my spine. It feels like I’m constantly breathing in very small doses of caffeine, but that caffeine is actually revitalizing me–not just pushing away the fatigue.

  It’s just like my potions. Health, mana, and sleep. I switch it to ‘health’ for now, to help with my recovery, and make a mental note to shift it over to energy when I’m feeling perfect.

  Clutter sniffs the air. “It smells like wet plants.”

  “That’s the smell of health. Apparently.”

  “It smells more like a forest after a rainstorm.”

  I shrug. “Complain to the quest if you don’t like it. Personally, I’m fine with anything that’s not that horrible… ‘clean’ smell.”

  We both shudder at the memory, and Clutter doesn’t have any more complaints. I swap back to my overview screen, then take a look at the last two options.

  Detection Range Options: Maximum/Balanced/Minimal.

  The higher the range, the weaker the detection effect.

  …

  Opacity Options: 99%/50%/1%.

  Warning: only lower this if you are able to withstand the outside radiation.

  Detection range is probably how far the ‘snow’ part of my map updates around the tower, and opacity seems like lowering it would let more radiation in. Not sure why I’d even want to control that, but I’ll try to remember that it exists for an edge case. I set the distance to ‘balanced’, stare at my map for a few seconds as the radius adjusts, and frown at the absolutely nothing that changes.

  I guess there’s not much to detect right now. So I’ll just keep it on maximum until something pops up. And… that’s it for now. We have a safe place, where we can apparently rest and recover with improved effect, and the ability to mess with it even more. Not a bad reward, but right now, I can’t see how this is leading us towards anything important.

  Especially since we have to leave the tower to search. If a group doesn’t have some kind of teleportation spell or skill, they’re at a huge disadvantage. Luckily for us, we’ve got two of them.

  I nod at Clutter's back. “Did you already set up a starway here?”

  “Oh, right, good idea. I completely forgot to do that.” He waves a hand, and a tiny shimmering mass of magic dissolves into the air around us. “That’ll take a week or so to get ready, so don’t count on it.”

  The little magic spell divides in two, then in four, then eight—continuing to grow smaller and smaller until my awareness can barely feel the thousands of tiny particles in the air with us. I wave a hand through the stuff, but it doesn’t move–almost like it already doesn’t exist in the same place as we do.

  “That’s all you have to do? Wait?”

  He shakes his head. “It also costs so much mana that I’ll only be half as useful for about a day. Then it puts me in a constant mana deficit for… about an eighth of my mana until it fully forms. After that, though, it just takes a good chunk of mana to activate. Pretty neat, huh?”

  “Yeah, it is. Not as convenient as my coins, but definitely more reliable.”

  Clutter straightens his spine with pride at my complement. “I can be reliable sometimes.”

  “You can be reliable now.” I grin and drop two relocation coins on the floor. “Link yourself to one of them, then get ready to go. I want to see what’s changed in the wall-halls.”