Boredom

With most of the members out of commission, there was not much to do.

That, and the most appropriate move currently was rest. With Rie's Spirit Energy regeneration rate and the supplies that came with stealing her body such as water and food, waiting for two or so weeks to resummon Restiel was an option.

As for reviving Magnus' original body, for now, it didn't seem like an effective idea.

"I noticed a recurring theme," He mumbled from Rie's lips, "And it always involves a strange force rooting me to the ground."

If Magnus just stole his original body back to have it die again, it would be a grand waste of Spirit Energy and time. It was better to just revive Restiel and proceed with the current line-up.

Keeping Rie active also seemed to be a great idea as having an information gatherer at his disposal was crucial to his success.

"I can probably locate the knife that Arlon asked me to retrieve through State of Higher Existence. I can also figure out just what was calling out to my Hivemind members..."

Like this, Magnus spent the days in boredom.

He did nothing of note as he waited for his Spirit Energy to regenerate. He could not even train or cultivate his spiritual powers. The only thing he did was eat, sleep, and exercise Rie's body a bit.

Other than that, all he could do was wait patiently.

Whenever he felt the boredom really hit though, he used the passive bonus of State of Higher Existence and drew upon a few pieces of relevant information.

He learned one thing over multiple attempts at grabbing info:

The knife he was asked to retrieve wasn't in this building.

It was somewhere else, meaning that whatever was calling out to him right now was something he could take for himself.

'I wonder what it could be,' He thought excitedly as the day when he could steal Restiel from the Mirror World arrived.

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"Hm," Restiel hummed, "It feels much better to have a physical body rather than just being a simple consciousness."

"Is it now?" Rie asked, speaking for Magnus, "I don't have that feeling..."

"That's because you're the main mind. I'm just something you created from memories, ideas, and fragmented personalities. The things I feel are drastically different from yours. Being alone in the Hivemind without a body makes me feel like I might lose myself." Restiel rolled his eyes.

"...I see," Rie scratched her head. Magnus peeped into what exactly Restiel felt as a simple consciousness and indeed he found a mountain of discomfort weighing down on his shoulders. It was a jarring feeling, like you were a piece of clay, slowly being spread out and flattened by a heavy object.

"Anyways, shall we head up to the next floor?"

"Let's do that," Restiel answered, feeling the strong calling that was acting upon his body once more.

Swiftly, Magnus found the staircase leading upstairs. He already used Rie to search for the elusive button that opened the secret door.

"Everything is so tedious in this tower," Restiel couldn't help but remark as Rie inputted some kind of code with the single button.

It was like morse code with the way that there were short taps, long taps, short rests, and long rests.

After scaling the stairs for a few moments, Restiel and Rie found themselves in another room, but this one didn't seem as weird as the first one.

Instead of a giant chess set, there was a piano. A grand piano of gold and black. A faint tune could be heard being played.

Some ghost was currently seated before the piano, playing a piece that Magnus found vaguely familiar but could not put his finger on.

Rie and Restiel did not proceed further after witnessing the scene. They waited an hour, and when it was up, Rie grabbed another piece of information from the void.

"Lethal danger; piano," Magnus spoke through her lips.

Restiel nodded as he explored the rest of the room while staying clear of the piano.

"I found nothing interesting. There's only the piano here." Restiel reported back.

"A door should be somewhere, but I'll have to pull that information out slowly again."

Magnus controlled Rie to move closer to the piano.

"Let's wait another hour..."

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After a few hours passed, Magnus finally figured out the mechanism behind the grand piano before him. It turned out that it was quite simple.

As long as he played the right song, he would be able to open the door to the next floor.

"And I was wondering why I couldn't get any information on any secret button..." Magnus grumbled as he had Rie sit down and play.

Magnus used the muscle memory present in the girl to deftly allow her fingers to dance across the keys. It was a pleasant surprise when he realised that Rie knew how to play the piano. Although it was possible to get through the floor without having the skill, it was still a great safety precaution.

He didn't want the scene where he pressed the wrong key to appear, causing the death of yet another Hivemind member.

He just wanted to get these puzzles out of the way because it was quite annoying to deal with.

"I wonder just what the maker of these things wanted," Magnus muttered as he played the piece with surprising affinity.

Some kind of magic was acting on Rie's body at that moment. It coursed through her veins and circulated around her hands. It was guiding her through the piece as if responding to the beauty of the song being played.

It allowed Magnus to dive into his mind as he thought things through.

'There is also a high chance that this is all a mutation... A part of the artefact... The same mutation that created the artefact out of what was originally a simple work of art.'

When Magnus was done playing the short piece, he felt the floor rumble as a hole appeared in the ceiling above him. The platform where the grand piano lay was being raised up towards the next floor like an elevator.

Restiel hurried onto the platform, deciding that flying before it was much too dangerous. He hid under the grand piano, hoping that nothing bad would happen to him.

"...Do you really want to avoid dying that much?" Magnus asked.

"I do... I told you, being a consciousness without a body is very uncomfortable. I'd like to avoid it if I can."

Seeing Restiel's cowardice made Magnus chuckle.

"You do you, I guess." He shrugged it off as he patiently waited for the platform to arrive on the third floor.

When he made it there, a similar sight appeared before him. A room with barely anything within.

Magnus grabbed a handful of information from the void and learned one thing:

What he was seeing currently was a maze. A maze with invisible walls.

Crossing over the invisible walls meant death.

"...Annoying," Magnus remarked as he waited for another hour before acting. He took three steps forward before stopping. He then waited another hour. Then he took another set of steps to the right.

Then he waited.

Then he moved.

This was his pattern as he spent the hours in irritation.

It took him a few days just to clear this floor.

And for the following floors after that, it sometimes took him around a few hours and sometimes an entire week.

All in all, Magnus spent an entire month and a half in this tower alone. Bored out of his mind.

When he finally arrived at the end, he screamed.

"FINALLY!" Rie's youthful voice rang throughout the almost-empty hall that was laid before her.

The thing that had called out to his Hivemind members was lying just a few steps away.

It was put on display inside a box of glass, on a pedestal, in the middle of a circular room. Magnus had Rie head inside, excited that all those puzzle-solving sessions were about to end.

Swiftly, she placed all of the key components she had gathered in their respective spots in a set pattern. She started with the chess cube she had gotten, then the maze's central orb, and then several more pieces before finally setting the grand piano's black key as the final piece.

Click, click, click!

The sound of a mechanism being triggered echoed throughout the room. Restiel swiftly appeared beside Rie after a short invocation, just in case.

Luckily, nothing bad happened as the glass box opened up with a blast of gas. It was like opening a bottle of soft drinks.

Fwaaaaaash!

A small cloud of smoke flowed out, obscuring the visions of both Restiel and Rie for a moment.

"This... It's indeed a deck of cards," Rie muttered Magnus' thoughts.

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Somewhere outside the artefact. A great distance away from Aosouru.

The real Rie was holding Javelin in her arms as she stared at a huge portal-like construct in the middle of the desert.

"This..." Her mouth was agape despite her vaguely expecting it beforehand. "It's much bigger than I thought."

"You really weren't exaggerating." One of her expedition-mates replied.

That's right. After an entire month and more of travelling through the desert, they finally made it. The place that Rie had given the coordinates to was this portal-like construct of sandstone and silver.

It was basically a giant arch placed on top of a similarly ginormous slab of sandstone. The surrounding dunes couldn't even dream of piling up high enough to drown this construct beneath the sand.

It was a titan of a building, with the base being 50 metres tall by itself. With the arch, it reached a staggering 200 metres, and that was just a rough estimate.

"So... where do we go now?" Rie asked, innocently, as she turned to her leader.

"We go exploring," Cavrien replied to her.

He then turned to the rest of the people under his leadership.

"Beware of sandworms and spitting scorpions. Let's move!"

A green light descended upon all of them at that moment after someone's short invocation. Rie instantly felt her body lighten and her mind sharpen. When she moved, she moved twice as fast as she did before.

"Haste..?" She muttered as Laura gave her a tap on her shoulder.

"Like my Blessing? It's pretty nifty for all sorts of scenarios."