The clone ventured into the mage tower and frowned at the effects of the corrosion.
The mage tower built here was way more complex than the one built inside Dombivili city with there being a 100 times more patterns per square foot of every surface inside.
The runic inscriptions inside glowed with a purple hue and it seemed to have 80 floors in total.
The mana concentration inside the mage tower was 100 times thicker than outside, and if it was not corrosive in nature then it could become a great training ground for young mages who could recover their lost MP quickly and keep on practising.
" 12 minutes to explore and 1.5 minutes to get back …. " The clone calculated based on how quickly he was losing vitality stat and saw his HP bar shrink without his HP being actually depleted.
Starting to sprint, the clone quickly scoured floor 1-5 and found various alchemical bottles, papers and potions which he tossed into his inventory without thinking too much.
The most interesting find within these floors were
—---> 3 bottles of advanced mana potion and 1 blueprint sheet for how to build an intermediate stamina potion distillery.
On floors 5-10, the clone found research papers sprawled all across the floor covering various topics which seemed to be concentrated on how to restrict the divine energy of god's, but he could not decipher 90% of the content inside it since it was written in ancient elven which the clone was not fluent in understanding.
On floors 10-15, the clone found training grounds having various chambers built to contain powerful spells and several mage sticks that could be used to channel one's power.
—---- > Tossing the best ones in his inventory, he collected 1 ancient grade and 2 epic grade mage staff from the training grounds.
Not having enough time, he did not skim through their descriptions but rather just tossed it all in.
At this point in time, he had already spent 3 minutes inside the mage tower and his HP bar had shrunk by 20%.
' Need to speed up ' the clone thought as he rushed hastily through floors 15-25.
These floors looked like actual research labs where the grand mage's apprentice might work on projects assigned by the grandmage and although there were many small and big artefacts laying across the rooms, there was nothing particularly eye-catching for the clone who just skimmed through everything without bothering to pick up anything.
Floor 25-35 were extremely appealing as they seemed to be storage rooms where a lot of valuable loot was stored.
—----> 12 boxes of advanced health potion, 12 boxes of advanced stamina potions, 20 boxes of advanced mana potions, 20 boxes of molotov cocktails, 50 boxes of different sorts of venoms, 50 boxes of body parts of rare animals useful in concocting potions.
If given enough time, the clone would have looted the store dry, but unfortunately he could only pick up about 2% of the total loot before time mandated that he keep climbing.
Floor 35-45 contained the very valuable inscription knowledge that was scarce in the modern age.
—--------> Intruder detection inscription, aerial attack repel inscription, automatic fire trap inscription, hypnosis ring inscription and mana gathering inscription were looted by the clone from the documents that were sprawled on the surface of the desks as he did not have time to search for more from drawers and other places in the room.
' DAMN IT ' the clone cursed in regret as he understood the value of the documents in his hands, if he had known that floor 35-45 was so valuable he would not have spent any time checking floors 1-35 and have spent every last minute scouring this room.
Moving on, the clone climbed to floor 50 from where things started to get really sinister.
Floor 50 was the place where alive bipedal experiments seemed to be conducted as the room carried a strong stench of death and decay.
Corpses of humans, elves, orcs, goblins were all sprawled in the room displaying the cruel nature of the abyssal mages and their dark practices to pursue ultimate knowledge.
Seven minutes were up by this point and the fatigue was starting to catch up to the clone, he had been running and picking up things constantly at his top speed and was gasping for air now since the stench in the room was horrible.
Floor 55-65 seemed to be a one massive interconnected library as the clone closed his eyes and tried to sense the mana being emitted out of the books to select the best ones.
As he closed his eyes he understood that the books on floor 65 were the most valuable and were the thickest containers of mana, as he ignored the books on floors 55-64 and climbed straight to 65 with big leaps over the stairs and started to toss in the book titles that he found interesting at first glance into his inventory.
—---> ' The laws of fire and fire spells' , ' Tier6 and unique identity ' , ' Celestials a myth or reality? ' , ' Resurrecting the dead ', ' Mana drain ' , ' Continental Destructive spells ' , ' A comprehensive guide on how to fight specific god's ' , ' Universal power balance ' , ' Recreating the powers of the sun domain '
Tossing these books into his inventory the clone tried to climb onto floor 66, but realised that the stairway was blocked by a closed door and entry was restricted for him above this area.
The clone tried to use [ scan ] to understand what lay on the floor above him but found out that his senses were blocked by some interference.
Time was ticking, and it had not yet completed its most important mission of finding clues about the barrier used by the queen to kill Max's brother, hence the clone needed to act fast and decisively to somehow find a way to climb further.
Whoever zogaroth was and whatever the source of contaminating aura inside the mage tower was, it seemed to come from floors above floor 65. It was the floor where the danger was the thickest, but it was also the floor that the clone needed to absolutely explore before going back down.
—--------
/// A/N - Chapter 9/20, a new day
If you are wondering why some documents are in ancient elvish but the clone can read some book titles, I'll cover it in next chapter so have patience ///