Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Misha stood with one hand outstretched as the amber from the Libra resonance burned faintly beneath her skin, but something heavier had begun gathering around her fingertips. It was a dull, earthen gold, dense enough that the air around her hand seemed to sink beneath its weight. The golden chains barring her from Caius rattled once, and the black floor beneath her boots gave a faint shudder.

"Tobias."

Nothing appeared but she could feel something, though she had no words for it. It was like calling down a well and sensing someone tilt their head at the sound of her voice from somewhere impossibly far below.

"Misha!" Caius shouted as he barely blocked the Primarch’s next strike.

"I am calling him!"

"Again!"

Her jaw tightened beneath the mask. ’Easy for him to say.’

Caius spoke as if she had done this a hundred times instead of exactly never. Possession she understood since she only had to authorize the Constellation Soul to possess her body. This was nothing like that. The new function sat inside her Contractor Authority like a door someone had installed while she was not looking, and apparently Caius expected her to know how to use the handle.

Misha clasped both hands together because she did not know what else to do.

"Please, Gramps. We really need the Mountain Walker right now." Her voice lost some of its usual bite. She glanced toward Caius just as another strike forced him to one knee. "Someone also needs to save that damn kid before his stupid zodiac ability and that ugly corpse tears him apart, and I don’t think I can do it without you."

Caius’ brow twitched even while blocking the Primarch. "That’s not how you should call him..."

Her head snapped toward him. "Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like to give me the manual while being beaten to death?"

The boy had no answer because the Primarch’s chain nearly removed his head.

"Tobias," she whispered this time as she shut her eyes. "Please."

Amber light floated away from her body. Misha gasped upon feeling it. The sensation was wrong enough that her eyes snapped open. Something had not entered her, it had been taken from her and drawn outward through a pathway that had never existed before.

Her hand flew instinctively to the center of her chest. "What–"

"Don’t stop!"

"But something is–"

"Misha!"

The Primarch drove him backward again and she noticed the blood leave his mouth.

There was no time to question this. Misha gritted her teeth and thrust one hand toward the empty sigil forming several meters ahead.

The black floor trembled.

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

«Temporary Soul Manifestation»

Cancer Chamber Selected.

Contracted Constellation Soul: Mountain Walker

—

Constructing External Vessel... 」

There was no earth inside Libra’s Chamber. Misha knew that because the entire place had been constructed from Caius Constellation Authority. Nothing here belonged to the natural world, yet dust rose anyway. At first, only several grains. They lifted from the black floor and hovered.

Powdered stone appeared where there had been none a second earlier, drawn from hairline cracks opening in the surface. The grains swirled around the empty sigil in slow circles. Pebbles followed, rolling against gravity toward the center until each one lifted soundlessly into the air.

The scent reached Misha next. The air was filled with the scent of wet stone after rain, impossible inside the closed Constellation Chamber. The golden scales above Caius and the Primarch moved at once, as if some vast courtroom had detected another authority entering without knocking.

The Primarch noticed too and Caius saw it happen.

The creature had spent the last several minutes learning Equinox, adjusting itself around the Chamber’s corrections with unsettling intelligence. Its six arms had never truly stopped moving. One feinted while another struck. One chain rose while another dropped. Even when motionless, some piece of it had always been testing, twitching, calculating. Now all six arms stopped, and its three grotesque faces turned away from Caius.

The change lasted for a few seconds but that alone was enough to send a cold thrill down Caius’ spine.

"The old man is here." A small smirk formed across Caius’ exhausted mouth.

Misha would have asked what the hell he meant by saying that so confidently if the sigil had not erupted.

Heavy boots took shape from compacted earth-colored mana inside the rotating dust. Ankles emerged next, then legs, broad and solid, built layer by layer as if an unseen sculptor were carving a man from the memory of a mountain rather than from physical matter.

Misha forgot the fight for a second.

The vessel continued rising. Knees, then waist wrapped in layered robes in the color of weathered rock and dried earth. The torso followed, then shoulders took shape, wide enough that the robe settled across them naturally. Arms emerged at his sides, hands formed last at the ends of them.

The pressure simply settled inside the Chamber. It felt as though someone had quietly placed an entire mountain inside it. The black floor groaned, the sound rolled outward from the forming vessel in a low tremor that Misha felt through the soles of her boots. Every scale above them swayed despite no difference in force being applied.

The massive balance behind Caius tilted half an inch, corrected itself, then trembled again as if the Chamber could not decide where this new pressure belonged.

From the haze of dust and earth-colored mana, Tobias’ face gradually came into view. His eyes remained closed as the last of the dust circled him. Then he inhaled and every loose grain of dust dropped at once.

The Primarch lowered its body. It was a monster that had spent several minutes figuring out how to manipulate the Chamber, had instinctively braced itself because an old man had not even opened his eyes yet.

For the first time since his Chamber had formed, Caius allowed himself a genuine smile. "There you are... old man."

THOOM.

A pulse traveled beneath their feet.

Tobias opened his eyes, brown-gold that was steady and old. He simply stood there with silver hair moving behind him as if a soft breeze was brushing against him.

For several seconds, nobody spoke, not Misha, not Caius. Even the Primarch remained strangely still, as though it were reassessing the situation.

Tobias looked down at his own hands, turned one over, then flexed his fingers. "Hm." Then, finally, he looked at Misha. "You have improved."

Her mouth closed behind the mask, then opened again. "I... I summoned you... I’m still in my body."

Tobias glanced at her from head to toe, taking in the blood, the damaged cloak, and the fact that she was very obviously standing in front of him under her own control. "I had gathered that."

"Y-you..." She paused then swallowed. "You could sound slightly more impressed."

"I see nothing has changed."

"I have never done this before tho..."

Something in her chest finally gave way, not enough to make her cry. She would have hated that. But there was a dangerous warmth behind her eyes, and suddenly looking directly at him became harder than looking at the Primarch because Tobias looked exactly how she last remembered him. The old man held himself with the same posture that somehow managed to look relaxed and ready for violence at the same time.

Misha had never expected to stand beside one of her souls like this, not with the same face and body.

For one stupid second, she wanted to cross the distance and hug him, but she settled for staring.

Meeting her gaze, Tobias’ expression softened. "You look as though you have seen a ghost."

She let out a wet, humorless breath. "Technically..."

KRAAANG!

Every golden chain inside snapped upward, wrapping around Tobias before anyone could react. Two went around his wrists, another circled his waist, then another caught one ankle.

The Chamber roared, every scale overhead swung toward the manifested Soul. Then a new, smaller scale materialized beneath the great pair. One pan lowered and the other remained empty.

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

Third Presence Detected.

Independent Weight: PROHIBITED 」

The warmth disappeared from Misha instantly. "Oh, fuck off..." Her head snapped toward Caius. "You said this would work!"

Looking offended, the boy replied with, "I said manifest him."

"You gambled on an experiment?!"

"I’m trying to find a loophole."

Tobias looked between them. "You two have become loud."

"We are being illegally detained by his chamber!"

The Primarch suddenly moved toward Tobias in a blink of an eye. Its six arms drove forward with enough violence to tear the old man apart. Instead, the golden chains reached out for the creature.

BOOM!

The enormous corpse stopped in mid-charge, then momentum folded backward through its body. It was ripped off its feet and thrown across the Chamber as if someone had hooked chains through its spine.

It crashed into the floor hard enough to carve a trench through black stone.

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

Recognized Parties may not redirect hostility toward an Unweighed Presence.

Standing Participants:

• Caius Solmere

• Primarch Vestige

Until adjudication is complete, neither Weight may attack, compel, or directly harm a Third Presence.

Violation will be immediately corrected by the Chamber.

The Scales permit no third weight. 」

The Primarch pushed itself up, one face screamed, another clicked, and third simply stared at Tobias. Then it lunged again but golden chains jerked it backward before it crossed half the distance.

"Well... That’s comforting." Misha’s shoulders loosened.

Tobias glanced down at the chains around his own wrists. "For you, perhaps."

"At least it can’t suddenly kill us while the Chamber decides whether you’re legally allowed to exist."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!