the ten dwarves surrounded the magic tower in their iron puppets; they held onto the pillars to try to keep the tower in place. isiah was digging through the nearby ground. once he had dug deep enough, they tried to fit the tower into the hole.

“connect!” isiah commanded the platform with his power of will. at the same time, abel received a notification that asked him if he wanted to permit this order. if he didn’t like having the tower in this spot, he could just say no to isiah’s request.

soon, all the metal substances on the platform were wrapping around the magic tower’s base. the magic tower was completely connected to the platform. everything seemed joined together.

wizard cyril looked in admiration at the tower, “you know, grandmaster, even we (the dwarves) can’t figure out what the materials for the floating fort platform are made from. they are just really, really tough, as far we know. if we can produce those things to make an entire magic tower, we could essentially make a fort that can’t be penetrated.”

the platform was an ancient item. over the past tens and thousands of years, many humans and dwarves dedicated themselves to researching the ruins left by the ancient ones. while the parts that could be understood were studied in every way conceivable, the parts that could not be understood were pretty much given up on.

due to its difficulty to understand the engineering behind the floating fort platform, the dwarves decided to sell it to abel at a very low price. if abel hadn’t taken it, it would’ve remained in the dwarven storehouse for another century or so.

isiah called to abel again, “excuse me, grandmaster! can you open the tower? we want to do an internal analysis of your tower!”

“wait!” abel responded. then, after he connected his power of the will to the tower spirit, he gave isiah permission to make an entrance.

a voice came from the magic tower, “the intelligence agency’s tower spirit welcomes you, my master. you have been granted access to enter.”

while the sound wasn’t very loud, but all the dwarves here could hear it very clearly–wizard cyril, especially. it was no wonder abel was so confident that he could control one hundred iron puppets at the same time. since he was planning to use wizard cliff’s tower spirit to command the iron puppets, there was no problem of whether the tower had enough capacity to do so.

one of the dwarves whispered, “is that the tower spirit that the st. ellis wizard union lost?”

“shut up!” isiah turned and frowned, “watch that big mouth of yours! if you keep talking, i’ll have you memorize the confidentiality manual another hundred times.”

needless to say, isiah was also very curious about abel’s tower spirit. still, abel was a trusted friend of the goff family and bernie. since master bernie was the one who sent them here, he couldn’t allow such trust to be thrown away.

“in!” isiah said, then entered the front door in his iron puppet. the other dwarves did so as well. as for abel and wizard cyril, they scanned inside the tower with their power of the will.

“a large-sized teleportation circle!” isiah screamed in excitement. so this building really belonged to the wizard union. as far as he knew, the wizard union was the only place that had large-sized teleportation circles installed inside their buildings.

“a piece of work, isn’t it?” wizard cyril said with a clearly disdained tone, “it’s a good thing that you killed cliff, grandmaster. he actually has the audacity to stuff a whole teleportation circle inside his own tower. same with the tower spirit. did the human wizards take no notice of it?”

to explain what wizard cyril said, it must be known that the human wizards and the dwarven wizards shared the same system. as the two races have worked very closely together, they’ve formed an agreement to not let certain items fall into the hands of any individuals. of course, those items included the teleportation circles and the intelligence-use tower spirits.

as a super-intelligent analyzing device, the intelligence-use tower spirit had a comprehensive calculating power to process all sorts of data. out of concerns of its cost and safety issues, the wizard union would only provide them to large institutes, such as the wizard union branches of the three kingdoms.

it was the same with large-sized teleportation circles. in fact, it was technically labeled as a “unique” wartime resource, which, by law, was meant to be secured in the strictest way possible. if it wasn’t, humans, dwarves, elves, even the orcs, they would be able to intrude into each other’s worlds. and with the capacity of a large-sized circle, it was possible to transport an entire army to an area very far away. imagine how devastating that would be.

“can you fix this teleportation circle, isiah?” abel connected his voice to the magic tower’s announcement system.

isiah replied, “it’s not very hard, grandmaster. with a bit of work, i can fix all the parts that were broken. luckily for us, the parts that fell off weren’t lost. they just scattered across this room.”

abel didn’t feel safe, though, “when you finish fixing it, isiah, i want you to shut it down right away. don’t let it appear in any teleportation network.”

isiah laughed out loudly, “ha! you got it, sir! how about i do some work on the teleportation circle’s core? if you let me do that, i can give it a brand new name that will appear on the network.”

“oh, please do, then!” abel said, “hey, i know wizard cyril doesn’t let you drink during work, but you will get your portions during dinner. and don’t worry about the food. we’ll have plenty for your boys to dig into pretty soon.”

then the dwarves all started laughing together. soon, after isiah put all the parts back, he started sticking them all together with a stabilizing gel. because of how delicate he could work with his power of will, everything looked just as good as if they were brand new.

“such a waste!” wizard cyril muttered as he watched. abel didn’t know what exactly this stabilizing gel was made of, but it was something the dwarves would lose an arm and a leg for. “tear of earth,” so it was called. it was meant to be a liquid that formed out of gold. they were mostly used to fix teleportation circles. unlike other materials that were used to do the same thing, the tear of earth could fix the broken parts perfectly back together.

there was a problem with it, though. that drop that was just used was already more expensive than a bunch of industrial puppets put together. abel didn’t know about that, obviously, but as far as he knew, he didn’t like it when wizard cyril was so stingy to him–especially when he was eating free meals at his place for ten days.

“i’m so sorry, wizard cyril. i don’t have a lot of the master’s wine left at my place. why don’t you just have our food for the next few days?”

“ok, stop! stop, i get it! just give me enough to drink! isiah! give the grandmaster all your best stuff! don’t save any of it! you hear that?”