Tower - Escort (Part 1)
What did he mean, a mere thousand years? Who did he think he was, some fantasy dragon or elf?
Even so, the middle-aged man in front of me seemed to be insane in a relatively refined way. At the very least, he wasn’t smearing shit on walls or suddenly attacking people.
After taking a deep breath, the middle-aged man spoke in a calm voice.
“With talent like yours, there’s no need for you to deliberately seek out the Magic Tower branches in the 20th-floor or 30th-floor zones. Still, they’ll each know their own styles of magic, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to visit them. But be careful. I don’t know which city you’ll end up going to, but there are few mages with enough discipline to suppress their jealousy as well as I can.”
“...Even if the Tower’s Emissaries would drag them off for it?”
“Are there not fools who commit murder on impulse even knowing they’ll be arrested for it?”
That was one hell of an answer.
Shit, was I actually in danger just now?
“Don’t look at me like that. If one does not feel jealousy toward talent acknowledged by that person, then one is unfit to call oneself a mage. But he must have known the depth of my discipline as well, which is why he sent you here.”
I didn’t know who exactly the Old Librarian was, but if this guy had rose-colored glasses on, they were welded to his face.
“Uh... yes, thank you.”
Even as I thanked him, I couldn’t help wondering if it was really correct to say thanks for not committing a crime against me. Not committing crimes was basic common sense. Criminals were the ones who were abnormal, barely even human.
So fine. I’d count it as gratitude for teaching me magic and giving me the spellbooks.
All I’d shown him was Magic Bullet, and in return he’d given me valuable knowledge.
I immediately sent the spellbooks through my Inventory to the Tower 1st Floor, where my main body was, then left the Magic Tower Branch at once.
“Jesus fucking Christ. I am never setting foot in this place again. Scary as hell.”
Common sense said you avoided rabid mad dogs suffering from Qi Deviation.
Never in my life had I expected to witness Qi Deviation in person—something I’d only heard about in Galaxy Murim internet stories.
And I definitely hadn’t known you could fall into Qi Deviation from learning magic instead of martial arts.
Back at the inn, I read through the spellbooks.
To summarize simply, the contents were an extension of the basic magic the middle-aged man at the Magic Tower Branch had shown me.
You created fire, then shaped it into blades, arrows, walls, and the like—swinging it, firing it, blocking with it. The books explained how to form and move each element along those lines.
Aside from that, they also covered how to create multiple elements at once and fuse them together.
For example, you could create water and release heat to turn it into ice, or absorb heat to make fog.
To explain all this, the books used complex functional equations to represent the movement of magic power. When I drew out the graphs on paper to check them, they were definitely intuitive.
I’d wondered why magic was expressed with mathematical formulas, but when it came to visualizing the movement of magic power, nothing beat graphs.
Still, if the graphs were this basic, couldn’t they just have drawn pictures instead?
Ah, maybe blueprints take up too much space?
But then why do incantations exist?
I had no idea.
No matter how I looked at it, there seemed to be a limit to what I could learn on my own.
If I had a master, things would probably be easier—but after visiting the Magic Tower Branch, I really didn’t want anything to do with the Tower’s mages.
“Once I reach the 20th floor, I’ll get a third slot, right? Then I’ll use Slot 3 for a magic world.”
Reincarnation took too much time, so I’d just make Slot 3 a regular clone.
I could observe the state of that world first, then decide whether or not to use Reincarnation.
And when Multidimensional Avatar reached level 20, it might unlock a new ability the way it had with Reincarnation and the 3rd-Person Avatar. If that happened, I’d want to make use of it too.
“Time to sleep.”
The sun had fully set, and outside the window it was dark. I lay down on the bed and drifted off.
I got up early in the morning, circulated my qi, and headed outside the city.
I was supposed to meet Lee Suyoung around ten and go up to the 12th floor at noon, so I decided to test out my magic outside the city first.
If I went into the forest, I ran into goblins, but practicing on goblins in a forest full of obstacles seemed inconvenient. So instead, I decided to test my magic on horned rabbits hiding in the grasslands and blade-legged birds.
Fire magic felt dangerous in case it started a wildfire, so I tried out wind and water magic instead, using compressed wind blasts and water bullets.
“Whoa. It takes way more magic power than I thought to get any real force behind it.”
Actually hitting the target wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected.
Once I picked a target, I could create a thread-like path with magic power and fire along it, and the spell would curve slightly in midair like a guided missile and strike home.
The problem was that making it a guided shot used two or three times more magic power than just firing in a straight line.
But if I fired straight, it wouldn’t land where I was aiming anyway, so I didn’t have much choice.
After killing around thirty horned rabbits and blade-legged birds like that, I extracted the Mana Stones, sold the carcasses to a butcher, and returned to my inn room to refill my dantian with internal energy through breathing exercises.
By the time I finished, it was already close to ten, so I hurried to the meeting spot.
“You’re late. Did you oversleep?”
“No, I went outside the city for a bit to practice something.”
“Practice?”
At Lee Suyoung’s question, I created a small flame on the tip of my finger.
“Magic?! Did you get magic from... that?”
Without saying it out loud, Lee Suyoung mouthed the words Ability Stone.
I’d thought this before, but she really had a good sense for this kind of thing.
“No. I found out there’s a Magic Tower Branch in this city, so I went there and learned the basics of magic.”
“What? There was a place like that?! C-could I learn there too?”
Her face was full of pure curiosity and anticipation, but I shook my head with a stiff expression.
“I’d rather just teach you myself. I don’t think you should go there.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“The guy running it is kind of insane. I’m never going back.”
At my firm answer, Lee Suyoung seemed to grow even more curious and asked about the Magic Tower Branch.
“I’m not joking. While using magic, he told me I should consider myself lucky he didn’t kill me because he’d trained his mind so deeply.”
The order of the explanation was a little off, but it wasn’t a lie.
If a guy could get jealous and suffer Qi Deviation over a sprout of a newbie he’d just met—someone who could only use a single level-1 Magic Bullet—then it was hard to believe he had that much mental discipline in the first place.
“Oh. Then I’m not going either.”
“Good choice. If you don’t trust me to teach you, then learn at the 20th floor or at a Magic Tower Branch in another city. Just not here.”
The 10th floor’s Magic Tower Branch wasn’t widely known, but according to the community, the Magic Tower branches from the 20th floor onward were much larger in scale.
I absolutely cannot mention meeting the Old Librarian there.
“Ah, one thing I noticed while trying magic out—shooting guided projectiles like Mulpung-i does isn’t easy. I think I finally understand why you can’t fire a bunch at once.”
“Huh? The Suoktan Mulpung-i shoots aren’t guided shots, though.”
“What?! They’re not guided, and they still hit like that?”
At my reaction, Lee Suyoung answered as if it were obvious.
“I did archery, remember? I do all the targeting and firing myself. Wait, did you seriously think they were guided shots this whole time?”
“Uh... y-yeah.”
“Hahaha! No way. You’re one to talk when every hand axe you throw lands so well, oppa.”
No, mine had literally never once landed where I was actually aiming.
That was all just dumb luck.
...But saying that out loud would do nothing for my pride, so I just nodded.
“R-right.”
From now on, even if it cost more magic power, I’d just use guided shots.
No—forget it. I should just stick to swords.
Since when had I ever been some kind of mage?
Lee Suyoung and I placed our hands on the crystal and went up.
The 12th-floor quest was easy.
A farmer wanted us to drive off the birds trying to steal grain from his rice fields.
The problem was that the “birds” were the size of eagles.
On top of that, like the blade-legged birds, they had blades attached to their legs.
I attacked with Magic Bullet, which consumed less magic power, while Lee Suyoung used her bow and Mulpung-i’s Suoktan. But while we managed to knock a few birds out of the sky, dozens of others would already have landed, pecked away at the grain, and then fled back into the air.
And once they escaped upward, they zigzagged wildly high in the sky, dodging arrows and water bullets, making them a huge pain to kill properly.
After firing magic a few times, I got so irritated that I bought a net with my reincarnation clone, had it sent over through the Inventory, and the moment the birds came down to peck at the grain, I threw it and caught them all in one go.
The synthetic fibers—products of 50th-century space engineering—were far too tough to be easily cut by the blades on their legs.
The birds trapped in the net became easy prey for my sword.
After repeating that a few times, the quest was completed in just an hour.
“C-could you sell me that net? I’ll give you 2,000 credits—no! 3,000 credits!”
The farmer looked at my net like it was some priceless treasure as he begged desperately.
It turned out the reason the farmer hadn’t used nets before wasn’t because he didn’t know to. It was because the blades on those birds’ legs shredded every net he tried, making them useless.
So of course he’d covet a net that didn’t instantly rip apart under those blades.
I sold the net I’d bought in a fit of annoyance for 3,000 credits.
I’d bought it for 20,000 nyang—about 20,000 won—so selling it for 3,000 credits, roughly 300,000 won, was great for me.
Given how desperate the farmer was, I probably could have sold it for three times that price, but I had no desire to make excessive profit off someone else’s misfortune.
Instead, I sold him five spare nets too.
The farmer was happy because he could buy more nets, and I was happy because I’d stumbled into a nice little extra income.
“Is your Inventory different from mine, oppa? Why do you have so many nets?”
“Hahaha. They look bulky, but they’re actually really light. Come on, since we finished early, let’s go straight to the next floor.”
I urged her onward.
The Tower’s 13th floor wasn’t that difficult either.
The quest on the 13th floor wasn’t tied to anyone making a wish to the Tower. We simply had to wipe out a goblin den whose population had exploded abnormally.
Finding the goblin den in the forest wasn’t hard.
If you followed the goblins wandering through the woods, sooner or later they went back to their nest.
The goblin den looked like a naturally formed cave.
Lee Suyoung was worried about fighting in the dark, but I saw it differently.
If going into the enemy’s den was dangerous, then simple—don’t go in.
At the bamboo grove I’d spotted while tailing the goblins, I cut down bamboo and used rope to make a simple barricade.
“Where did you learn to make something like this?”
“The military.”
In the army, we sometimes made temporary barricades with spikes for blocking vehicle entry.
Usually those were welded together with rebar and steel pipes, or rebar and metal plates. But when you didn’t have teeth, you had to chew with your gums.
So I substituted sharpened bamboo and rope.
And of course, I’d also learned how to tie it so it wouldn’t come loose in the military.
Back when I learned it, I hadn’t even realized I was learning anything. I’d just thought I was doing pointless grunt work dumped on me by the sergeant major. But really, people ought to learn whatever they can.
Who knew it would help me like this?
That said, I still had absolutely no desire to ever go back to the military.
That place was not fit for human habitation.
Before sealing off the cave entrance with the barricade, Lee Suyoung and I first dealt with the goblins wandering outside the den.
Then we blocked the cave entrance right away.
To secure the barricade in place, I used earth magic to bury the lower part deep into the ground.
After sealing the entrance, I procured fumigation grenades used to exterminate space cockroaches—things that could breed even aboard spaceships—lit one, reinforced my arm with internal energy, and hurled it deep into the cave.
It burst and began spewing thick toxic smoke.
I kept throwing in more of the roach-killer fumigation grenades—things potent enough to send humans to the hospital if they breathed them too long.
After tossing in around ten, thick, acrid smoke started billowing out of the cave mouth too, and along with the goblins’ panicked screams, I heard them rushing toward the entrance.
Instead of her bow, Lee Suyoung held the bamboo spear I’d made for her and stabbed the goblins as they tried to charge out.
I also worked hard, skewering goblins with my bamboo spear and shoving the corpses aside.
“Oppa, is the superpower you got not martial arts but some kind of special shop? With the combat suit and the nets and all, weird stuff just keeps popping out!”
“Less talking, more stabbing! They keep pouring out!”
Sharp girl.
No, maybe I’d been a bit careless.
Still, it couldn’t be helped.
I wasn’t about to put myself at a disadvantage just so my party member wouldn’t get suspicious.
If Lee Suyoung wanted to keep partying with me, she’d just have to assume I had some secrets and let it slide.
After stabbing away for quite a while, it was already lunchtime.
As I pulled out the sandwiches I’d bought on the 10th floor, I asked,
“It’s still early. Want to go up?”
Taking a big bite from the sandwich I handed her, Lee Suyoung nodded.
“After we rest a bit.”
“Good idea.”
We had massacred 200 goblins and 12 hobgoblins.
(To be continued in the next chapter.)