The first floor of the tower consisted of a large circular room at the center, with several smaller, similarly shaped rooms surrounding it.
Standing in the center of the main room were three pillars, the 'physical' representation of Nickel's mind, body, and spirit Pillars.
Nickel moved to stand in front of them, looking them over.
"The Pillars are equal size. Good."
Having a Pillar be significantly larger or smaller would have unbalanced him. Of course, having Pillars that were equal wasn't a sure sign of greater potential. Even if your Pillars were equal, they could still be equally bad.
Nickel didn't have that problem, of course.
Nickel moved on from the Pillars, to one of the side rooms of the first floor, the one immediately to the left from where he entered the tower..
Opening the door, he found a room that was practically empty, except for the presence of the [Void Scales] in one corner of the room.
Nickel smiled slightly upon seeing it. He'd do his best to make his father and grandfather proud wearing that armor.
He gently closed the door to his Internal Armory, and went to enter the room to his right.
Inside, he found a small cylindrical stand in the center of the room. Hovering above it was a writhing ball of silver-black energy. The family's research had referred to it as Lohk, devouring energy. Every few seconds, what looked like the maws of tiny dragons would appear from within, biting at the air before dissipating back into the orb.
"That must be [Devour]."
Nickel circled around the representation of his ability, giving it a wide berth. He looked to the back of the room, hoping to see something of his Attributes, but found nothing.
"I was kind of expecting a display for [Gluttony], at the very least. Oh, well."
Circling back around [Devour], he left the room.
Back in the center room, Nickel glanced around. There were six more doors leading off, and an open archway that sat opposite the tower's entrance.
Of the six doors, only one of them seemed like he could pass through it. The remaining five had black chains criss-crossing over them, a clear indication of being sealed.
Nickel's brows furrowed in thought.
"There's eight doors on the first floor. One of them is the armoury. And based on the fact two of them are currently accessible, there's six for my Aspects… "
'But what's the last door?'
Unfortunately for our newly awakened adventurer, different people's Internal World's didn't follow any sort of similar logic, at least not when it came to layout and appearance.
Nickel could make some assumptions, but ultimately, they would only be assumptions.
He shook his head.
Choosing to slot this away for later, he opened the only other unsealed door. The one that would hopefully give him some insight into his Aspect of the Saint.
Entering the room, Nickel found… not what he was expecting.
There wasn't a central representation of his Aspect Ability. Instead, equally spaced along the circular wall of the room, there were six… glass cylinders? They looked like glass. Each was about two meters tall and a meter across.
And two of them had something inside. Walking up to one of them, Nickel saw a small green breeze flowing around the container.
Looking over at the one to his left, he saw small motes of soft golden light floating within.
"My [Elemental Wells], huh? How do I know how far they are from being full?"
As soon as the words left his mouth, a system screen popped up in front of him.
[Elemental Wells]
[Wind]: [1/10,000]
[Light]: [2/10,000]
"That's convenient." Nickel said, surprised. "Now, can I see those outside my Internal World?"
Having finished his business here, and wanting to know the answer, Nickel willed himself to leave.
—
Nickel opened his eyes in the training ground and immediately willed his [Elemental Wells] progress to appear.
"Good, I won't have to go back into my Internal World just to check it." Nickel sighed in relief once the screen opened up. "But… Do I need them to be filled to use [Loyalty of the Sword]? And if I don't, can I get a better result if I choose to wait?"
It didn't really matter now. Nickel was still a long way off from filling even one of his [Elemental Wells].
He could probably try to fill one of them by using [Devour] on another person's mana, but he needed 10,000 mana.
The person he knew with the most mana, that would also be willing to help him, was Liz's mother, Emilia. Her mana vessel could hold a few hundred units of mana… the only problem was that it seemed like using [Devour] to fill his Wells had an absolutely abysmal conversion rate.
The mana he had received from Devouring the spells Will and Liz had used was only a tenth of their cost.
Even if he knew someone willing to help that had 1,000 mana units in their mana vessel, they'd need to drain themselves one hundred times for Nickel to fill even a single Well.
That simply wasn't sustainable. He'd have to find another way to take in a massive amount of mana.
Maybe he should go to a death zone.
There were areas of Sherash where the concentration of ambient mana had skewed too heavily towards a specific element.
Volcanic regions where firestorms spontaneously formed, mountains that constantly shifted as metals sprung up and melted down. Seas where fierce, howling winds and crushing waves made travel by any but the sturdiest ships and the toughest crews all but impossible.
If there was anywhere Nickel was going to find large quantities of specifically attuned mana, it was there.
Entering a death zone required two things though.
Affinity for the mana there, and the ability to actually survive.
If you didn't have the affinity, you'd develop mana poisoning almost immediately.
And if you weren't strong enough, well, the death zones always had other ways to kill you.
So, for now, death zones were out.