"Before I lead you to open up your classrooms, there's something I need to explain first."
Skyl walked ahead, guiding his three companions toward the floating bookshelves.
Seeing how serious he looked, Brelyna and the others couldn't help feeling a little eager about this so-called "classroom."
"Go on, we're listening."
"The space we're in right now—this whole area—isn't actually the true body of the Tower of Tomes." Skyl said, working hard to salvage the dignity of the Lord of the High Tower he'd made up for himself. "In fact, this is my personal classroom."
"Huh?" "What?" "Oh."
The three of them still looked pretty lost.
Skyl sighed. "Do you remember what the old orc Urag gro-Shub in the Secret Archive said? He claimed this was my Oblivion realm. He was exaggerating—but I'm not."
"Eh?!" "What?!" "Oh?!"
"You heard right. The real Tower of Tomes is actually made up of countless hexagonal galleries, all built to the same design. The Lord of the High Tower granted me the authority to open a classroom and gifted me one of those galleries as my private domain."
Skyl snapped his fingers.
It was as if a sudden, torrential rain had washed across reality. All color and shape around them began to blur and run, and in the next instant, everything had completely changed.
They now stood inside a hexagonal gallery. Five of the walls were covered in bookshelves; the remaining wall was piled high with miscellaneous junk. In the center of the gallery yawned a huge ventilation shaft, a lightwell plunging up and down into infinity. Above and below, they could see one identical gallery after another, stacked like mirrors facing mirrors, receding into immeasurable distance. At the very limit of sight, there was a single point of absolute darkness.
If you stared into that abyss, it would quickly fill your vision; within it floated the phantom sun and the Eye of Magnus, hanging together in the void.
Brelyna, Onmund, and J'zargo all gazed at the scene, their faces full of awe at the strange, divine grandeur of this place.
"Are these galleries… truly infinite?"
Of course they weren't, but Skyl still answered without missing a beat: "Naturally."
"Then J'zargo can have his own domain? J'zargo's… home?"
"Mm, of course."
Skyl pushed aside the nearest bookshelf, revealing a narrow arched doorway that led into another gallery.
"Each gallery is independent, but they're all linked. You can choose any of them as your classroom. In practice they're all more or less the same—a blank shell, like a newly built house waiting for its owner to decorate."
Once the three of them had picked a hexagonal gallery they liked, Skyl led them in a prayer to the Lord of the High Tower.
"Bearer of all truth, master of the Tower of Tomes, in whose thoughts the secret history of the cosmos rises and sinks. Today we pay homage to your wisdom; may your generous grace shelter us. Grant us the authority to found classrooms. I shall hold the Key of the Door and gather the world's knowledge and enlightenment, to which I swear myself for this life."
A breath of wind rose from the ventilation shaft in the middle of the gallery. From the void, three silver keys drifted over and came to rest in front of Brelyna, J'zargo, and Onmund. The three of them all looked up, faces tense, and carefully reached out to take the keys.
The silver keys released a warmth that felt like light, and then like a searing beam: it burned straight through their flesh, turning their bodies transparent and glass-like as their souls rose like pale smoke and soaked in the radiance.
The anomaly didn't last long. Soon the silver keys melted away, becoming small, door-shaped marks that settled over their hearts. As the glow faded, Brelyna, J'zargo, and Onmund all returned to normal.
"Congratulations. From today on, you are disciples of the Lord of the High Tower." Skyl gave them a little wink. "You'll understand soon enough just what a 'classroom' can do for you."
Those silver keys had been forged from a trace of pure divine power. Using the techniques for handling godly power recorded in Mora's Breath, Skyl had crafted his own blessing-seal.
The moment the three of them accepted the keys, they became dependents of Skyl—vassals of the Tower of Tomes. After the transformation, both their flesh and souls now belonged to the Tower. In truth, they had already become Daedric beings: if they were killed in any other world, they would simply revive unharmed inside the Tower.
It was both the gift of immortality and the cage of eternity.
Fortunately, the Lord of the High Tower was a "blind" Daedric Prince; becoming His dependents was all upside and no downside.
"Wow, what a generous Daedric Prince! Praise be to the Lord of the High Tower!" Brelyna and the others were so delighted that even their eyebrows seemed to be dancing.
Skyl nodded with reserved satisfaction. That's right—he was just that generous. New hires not only got housing; he'd even sorted out their tenure and benefits plan.
"You now have your own classrooms. You can freely change the layout of your classroom, but that does consume your own magicka, so don't go too wild. More importantly, when you're inside your own classroom, you'll receive the Lord of the High Tower's blessing—anything you attempt will have a much higher chance of success."
Skyl was still the undisputed master of the Tower of Tomes; he alone could wield true omniscience and omnipotence in this realm. All he could grant the others was a luck buff—something very much like Liquid Luck from the Harry Potter world, letting inspiration flare and making everything feel guided by unseen hands (or so Skyl cheerfully sold it to them).
They each needed some time to digest their gains.
Skyl returned to his own "classroom" and began thinking about his next step.
Now that he had the Eye of Magnus, whenever he was inside the Tower of Tomes he really was a Daedric Prince in truth. The embarrassing part was that the moment he stepped outside, he'd be knocked back down to his ordinary state.
To ensure he had enough power when traveling abroad, Skyl decided to copy the Eye of Magnus and create a smaller, portable god-battery he could carry with him.
The first step in forging a fake artifact was gathering materials.
The Eye of Magnus's shell was made from some nameless residue left over from the act of creation itself—odd stuff, uniquely suited to withstand constant exposure to divine light.
If Skyl wanted to recreate that material purely through Transfiguration magic, it would be slow and exhausting. Using up all the magicka the Eye naturally generated in a single day, he'd barely be able to produce five micrograms' worth.
So he opted for a budget version: ebony steel as the main shell, with a thin inner plating of primordial creation-residue to prevent divine power from leaking out.
After a day's work, he finally finished a knock-off Eye of Magnus and named it the Eye of the High Tower. It could supply Skyl with a constant flow of magicka; if you translated it into game terms, his mana regeneration had just been boosted by 100000%.
From now on, he no longer had to worry about running dry in the middle of a fight. And if he ran into something he absolutely couldn't beat, he'd just open a portal, step back through it—and instantly, it'd be the true Daedric Prince on stage. With a door at his back, not even a god could scare him.
The Eye of the High Tower was a thumb-sized black sphere, its surface covered in vast numbers of tiny, shifting runes: the hallmark of divine-level enchanting, and honestly, Skyl's own personal god-tier artifact.
He made a hollow, eye-shaped pendant out of silver, set the little black sphere inside, and hung it around his neck so it rested against his chest.
The immediate harvest from the Eye of Magnus had come to an end; the ripples it would cause in the future were still waiting for Skyl to handle.
Brelyna, Onmund, and J'zargo stayed holed up in their classrooms for two or three days before finally coming out again, utterly addicted to that feeling of being constantly favored by luck.
The first thing Onmund said to Skyl when he stepped out was, "I did it. I beat Contra. I actually cleared Contra!"
Skyl: You little—
J'zargo, for some reason, had changed into a set of white priest's robes. With the white cloth wrapped around his feline head, he looked like some monk from the Indian subcontinent who'd taken the wrong road into Skyrim. He solemnly announced that from today onward, he was a devoted believer of the Lord of the High Tower, and that he would spread the gospel of the Tower of Tomes to every Khajiit he met.
"May warm sands lie before your paws. And at the end of the sands, may the High Tower stand." the Khajiit mage intoned, completely lost in his priestly role.
"Quit fooling around," Skyl said. One glance was enough to see J'zargo was having the time of his life.
Of the three, Brelyna was still the most studious. She practically bounced as she walked, cheeks still flushed from excitement that hadn't faded in days.
"Studying inside a classroom is incredible! It's like knowledge itself is rushing over to hug me! Now I finally understand how you learn magic so fast, Skyl. I knew there had to be some kind of method!"
"Back then you weren't a dependent of the Lord of the High Tower yet." Skyl also thought back to that day Brelyna had come shyly to ask him how he did it—that awkward, stubborn face of hers hiding curiosity had been oddly cute.
"Skyl, let's go back to the College," J'zargo declared, raising both paws high. "Let more people know about the Tower of Tomes. Let more people join the High Tower Covenant!"
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