Opening Skirmish 3
In a fleeting instant that lasted less than a second for me — a span of time my companions couldn't even perceive — Han Se-ah spent a full day outside the VR console and fired up her stream again. After reading the post I'd written as Jjanhae-jwa, complete with a VPN system.
Force-march down ten floors overnight, exit through a gate, and report to the Guild and the Magic Tower — or head to the safe zone inside the twentieth floor and make contact by magic. No matter how I looked at it, the latter was the only rational choice.
"Honestly, that might be faster. But if we make contact and get commissioned to investigate, we could end up stuck inside the Tower longer than expected. You okay with that?"
"I'm fine."
"If that is the Goddess's will."
Kayden nodded without a word, while Grace and Irene looked between me and Han Se-ah and signaled their agreement. Stretching a one-night, two-day schedule into two nights and three days was probably better than a forced night march anyway.
Seeing everyone fall in line with Han Se-ah's opinion, I pulled another lantern from my belt. A safe-zone lantern, a passage lantern, an adventurer's badge, a ration pouch — Grace's eyes lit up the moment she saw my inventory.
"Then let's move to the twentieth-floor safe zone."
"Does that lantern guide you to safe zones?"
"That's right. Also made by the Magic Tower. Just like a guide lantern finds passages, this one links to the guardian stones inside a safe zone. Given the situation, we'll go straight there. If any orcs show up, I'll handle them as fast as I can."
I finished the explanation and pressed the lantern into Grace's hands — our party's scout. Aside from a slightly different exterior, the mana stone fragment inside moved like a compass the same way the passage lantern did, so further explanation wasn't needed.
Grace turned the lantern over in her hands, hung the passage lantern at her waist, and took the lead without another word. From that point on, nothing stood in our way. A quest pace that would satisfy not only the Korean viewers but the global influx of new ones as well.
I walked beside Grace, crushing traps with my body as we pushed straight ahead. Whenever an orc warrior appeared on our path, I charged out and smashed its skull. A fist that could pulverize rock had no trouble with an orc's head. Hunters fled, warriors became mana stones, and our footsteps never stopped.
Following the lantern's guidance for a long while, we finally arrived at the safe zone.
"Whoa… there's something like this inside the Tower…"
"It's a Magic Tower project, so of course they built it properly."
As if declaring that orc villages were children's playhouses, a wooden palisade stood packed tight without a single gap. Armored sentries scanned every direction from the top, and watchtowers and surveillance magic tools filled every remaining space.
A major Magic Tower outpost, never disclosed to ordinary adventurers. They'd used mana to locate a place where monsters never appeared, then escorted laborers under heavy guard and poured magic and money into building a miniature fortress.
"Halt! This is a Magic Tower outpost — a place not permitted to adventurers. Remain outside the fence—"
"Upper-grade adventurer Roland. I'm here to report an anomaly that occurred inside the Tower. I'd like you to contact Lord Antenor."
The moment we stepped into the cleared logging zone that secured their line of sight, a sentry reacted immediately. His training was solid — sharp and snappy — so I dropped the name of an old man I knew. A five-star mage based on the forty-third floor, the one who'd come all the way down to the first floor because of the Full Moon Wolf Gate.
Upper-grade adventurer Roland and high-ranking mage Antenor. Not names a sentry could casually brush aside.
The arrowheads pointed downward, and his tone grew a touch more polite. Once he realized we weren't intermediate-grade freeloaders looking for a place to crash, the sentry addressed me carefully — the thorough professionalism of a man who couldn't let outsiders into a critical outpost without proof.
After calling a colleague to cover him, the sentry dropped from the palisade with agile movements and approached me.
"May I verify your adventurer's badge and any items that can serve as evidence?"
"Here. My badge, and byproducts from a new type of monster."
"Ah… please wait a moment."
The sentry's gaze locked not on the adventurer's badge, but on the warrior's and shaman's necklaces Han Se-ah had pulled from her inventory. Two necklaces fashioned from small animal bones and feathers, both clearly saturated with mana.
Anyone skilled enough to handle mana would immediately recognize them as monster byproducts of the same category as mana stones, not ordinary trinkets. As a Magic Tower sentry guarding a critical twentieth-floor outpost, he caught on at once.
"May I take the badge and byproducts to make my report? Lord Antenor is currently inside his laboratory, so…"
"I know that old man. Once he goes in, he won't come out even if the place is on fire. Don't bother knocking — just open the door and toss the byproducts inside. That's more effective."
"Ahaha… th-thank you for the advice."
The sentry laughed awkwardly, clearly unable to follow an order to throw things at a superior of the institution that employed him. He hopped back up onto the palisade, exchanged a few short words with his colleagues, and slipped inside.
The people waiting atop the wall then bustled about, operating some kind of magic tool. With a heavy grinding sound, a massive log began slowly sliding left and right.
"Wait, that was a door?!"
"Mages made it, so."
No — a massive stone gate with magic layered over it to look like logs.
A colossal stone door that ordinary attacks couldn't even scratch opened slowly left and right, like an automatic door. More than enough to stop an orc hunter or a charging helmeted deer. Grace's mouth fell open in pure astonishment at the sheer grandeur of it.
Between clinging to Han Se-ah to gawk at her inventory and this, Grace was surprisingly interested in magic.
"Have you visited this place before, Kayden?"
"Yes. The last time I accompanied a mercenary company as a porter, this was our final destination."
Unlike Irene, whose eyes had gone round, and Grace, whose jaw was hanging open, Kayden followed me through the gate as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Watching her, Han Se-ah latched onto her side like a reporter mid-interview.
Of course, only Kayden and I were unfazed. Han Se-ah and her viewers alike couldn't hide their shock at the mages' eccentricities.
Hauling stone all the way into a forest on the twentieth floor of the Tower to build a mountain fortress was absurd enough — then they'd layered magic over the stone walls to disguise them as a wooden fence. And the entrance was an automatic door that slid open left and right. Ridiculous.
But what could you do? All of it was the result of mages experimenting.
They'd hauled stone to test transport capacity, cast illusion magic under the pretense of installing permanent magic circles, then decided they needed to test magic tools too and built an automatic door — and the outpost ended up looking like this. Not the work of one mage, but a bizarre fortress born from every mage doing whatever experiment they felt like.
The silver lining, I supposed, was that the interior was perfectly normal.
Periodic logging to maintain their line of sight meant timber was overflowing. Thanks to that, the space inside the stone walls was packed with wooden cabins. Orc hunters didn't shoot fire arrows, so wooden buildings weren't particularly dangerous.
"I'll escort you inside. Shall I take you to Lord Antenor's temporary laboratory?"
"That old man will take forever to come out, so I'd rather be shown to the contact point for the Adventurers' Guild."
"Yes, understood."
The moment we stepped through the open gate, another sentry fell in behind us. I shook my head at the offer to take us to old man Antenor. The one who'd just carried off my adventurer's badge and the orc byproducts would spend a solid hour fiddling with them before anything else happened.
So we were led instead to a cabin where a mage sat in a rocking chair, reading a book.
"Hm? What is it, Jackson?"
"By request of Upper-grade adventurer Roland, we need to establish contact with the Adventurers' Guild."
"The Adventurers' Guild, not the Magic Tower?"
"My colleague has already gone to the laboratory to explain the situation to Lord Antenor, who is currently downstairs."
Comfortable enough to be lounging and reading, the mage clearly held a fairly high post — the sentry explained the circumstances with meticulous deference. An upper-grade adventurer's badge and byproducts from an unknown monster had been submitted as evidence, and the visitor was acquainted with high-ranking mage Antenor… and so on.
Mages could be such a pain about this sort of thing. When something unfamiliar happened, they had a habit of listening to every last detail of the explanation before they would even think of moving. That was why I'd advised tossing the byproducts into old man Antenor's lab.
By now, the sentry who'd taken my badge and the byproducts was probably recounting every tedious detail — from the moment our party appeared outside the walls to the exact second Han Se-ah pulled the byproducts from her inventory and handed them over.
And once that explanation was finished, he'd examine the orc warrior's byproduct and the orc shaman's byproduct, then come looking for me.
"Hmm… very well. I'll contact the Adventurers' Guild at once."
Just like the mage in front of me, who only now raised his hand to the communication crystal after hearing the sentry's full explanation.