The Sewer Tower's Eccentric Lord
What the hell is this world?
The scenes the Game Master had shown me last night, the endless flood of information pouring into my brain—it felt like my head was about to explode. That was when it happened.
Knock knock.
“Excuse me.”
“What is it?”
“There is a guest in the tea lounge who wishes to see you, Sir Solomon.”
“……Who?”
“It is Lord Bawry, the master of the Sewer Magic Tower.”
Lord Bawry?
The very man who had shown Solomon his ‘goodwill’ by giving him the Black Bird Spirit Bracelet along with a considerable sum of money. The lord of the Sewer Magic Tower, the den of low-tier underground mages.
Solomon had thought their business was already concluded. What could he want now?
“What would you like to do?”
The voice outside the door asked cautiously.
“Shall I convey your refusal? Or I could tell him to return at a time of your choosing.”
“No. I’ll go right now.”
There was no reason to turn away someone who had come looking for him. Solomon quickly threw on his clothes and left the room. It was the Nightweaver Coat, now riddled with holes thanks to the Alvheim Typewriter.
I should get this repaired… or maybe look for new gear.
By the time Solomon had dressed and stepped into the hallway, the voice from outside had already moved past room 117—his own—and was now knocking on room 120. It was a zombie, neatly dressed in a hotel uniform.
“Excuse me, Sir Belluci.”
Knock knock.
“You have now exceeded the number of days a biological entity can survive in this room without nutritional intake. Are you still alive?”
“……”
The zombie hotelier spoke while emitting the stench of rotting flesh. So checking on the survival of guests was part of the hotel’s duties? It was information Solomon would have preferred not to know.
He stood there for a moment, watching. No answer came no matter how long they waited. Surely the guest hadn’t actually died.
“If there is no response confirming survival by midnight tonight, we will proceed with a forced room entry in accordance with hotel regulations.”
With that, the zombie hotelier moved on to the next room, and then the one after. It seemed this was the time for a full sweep of the floors.
“Excuse me.”
“Stop being such a fucking jinx and piss off, you walking corpse!”
“Understood, Sir Lewis.”
The curse came the instant the knock landed. It really was a hotel full of every kind of freak. Solomon watched for a moment longer before finally moving on.
He was heading to meet the visitor who had come looking for him right after he finished last night’s request.
Solomon headed straight down to the central lobby and made for the tea lounge, crossing a corridor lined with antique reddish-brown carpets and gloomy oil paintings.
Soon, cutting through the hotel’s signature stench of decay, another odor stood out with overwhelming presence.
The smell of a sewer. It was a foul, nauseating stench, as if someone had shoved their nose straight into a drain.
And there, carrying that very stench, was the man.
“Yo, yo, yo, my bro!”
Black skin, a shaved head, and piercings dangling from every inch of him from head to toe.
His eyes, nose, mouth, ears, tongue—even the surface of his eyeballs—were studded with bead piercings like barnacles on a seaside rock.
The master of the Sewer Magic Tower, Lord Bawry. The word ‘grotesque’ alone couldn’t fully capture his bizarre appearance.
“……You were looking for me.”
“I got this feeling we’re gonna be ‘good friends,’ you and me!”
“Cut the bullshit. Why did you call me here?”
When Solomon spoke with deliberate indifference, Lord Bawry answered.
“What other reason would anyone have to look for a guest at Hotel Snark?”
“……”
Solomon remained silent. Was this about taking on a request?
“A tower master like you, coming to a first-floor guest?”
“Oh, first-floor guest! Adults do love their numbers, don’t they?”
“What?”
“Numbers, I said! Numbers! The number!”
Lord Bawry cackled. Solomon shut his mouth, wondering what fresh nonsense this was.
“Adults never ask about the essence of a new assassin! What floor does the kid live on? What room number? What’s his request success rate? They think those pathetic questions let them know everything about a fixer from Snark!”
“……”
“That’s not the essence! What matters is, ‘Does the kid handle work professionally?’ ‘Can the kid stay cool even in dangerous situations?’ That kind of thing!”
Solomon asked back, utterly dumbfounded.
“Thanks for the compliment, but did you really come all the way here reeking of sewer just to say that?”
“Ahem.”
Lord Bawry shrugged.
“As you can—well, smell—I do have a bit of an odor. It’s been a while since I last washed… quite a long while, actually…”
He spoke as if it were someone else’s problem, then suddenly slammed the table, veins bulging.
“Goddamn it all to hell! This fucking sewer stench! It’s vibrating through the whole damn place!!”
“Did you get cursed so you can’t wash?”
“Oh, that’s exactly it! Damn shit! Exactly! That’s the question! I’ve been waiting for someone to ask that!”
“……?”
“Because no one ever does!!”
Lord Bawry shouted, veins standing out on his neck.
“Everyone just assumes the smell coming off me means I’m some sewer rat by nature!!”
“……”
“All the kids under me think the same thing, and they’re too busy watching their manners to ever ask! That’s why they all end up as the same kind of sewer-scum bastards!”
His face flushed red and purple, looking ready to explode at any moment.
“Oh, but you’re different! You asked straight up why a tower master smells like a Peace Of Shit! That’s what a Real Man is! A real man’s man! I mean a genuine, proper, real man!!”
“So what kind of curse did you get hit with to end up like this?”
“I was cursed by the Water Spirit King.”
Lord Bawry shouted, veins popping on his shoulders.
“The curse that turns every drop of water I touch into filth!!”
Solomon fell silent, at a complete loss for words.
Lord Bawry of the Sewer Magic Tower was once a member of one of the Five Great Families of Uptown. He was a mage so successful that he shared a *rather intimate* relationship with the Water Spirit King…
Until his own *self-inflicted ruin* drove him to the bottom of the sewer, that is.
‘!’
A mage from one of the Five Great Families.
At the narrator’s following words, Solomon swallowed his breath in silence. He did his best to maintain a calm facade.
“So why are you telling me all this?”
“Because you asked!”
A curse that prevented him from washing even if he wanted to. In a way, it seemed even more horrific than death.
“And because no one ever asks!!”
Lord Bawry shouted again, veins bulging.
“I can’t bring up this curse first! That damn Bitch put a gag on my mouth! Do you have any idea how awful that feels? It’s like having an expired sausage stuffed in your mouth all day!”
“……That’s a truly disgusting analogy.”
Setting the unexpected information aside, Solomon kept his composure.
“I’d like to hear about the actual job now.”
“Oh, right. Business! By the way, how about we talk while we walk?”
Having said that, Lord Bawry stood up.
“There’s a place I want to show you.”
* * *
Lord Bawry used the ‘Room of Doors’ inside Hotel Snark to emerge onto a Downtown street.
Seeing that no one stopped them even though they were outsiders to the hotel, it seemed the Room of Doors could be used freely by non-guests as well. At least when leaving. He wasn’t sure about entering.
The street they stepped onto was one that could not possibly be unknown even among Downtown’s twenty districts.
The pinnacle of Downtown’s 20th district, District One—MegaCorp Street.
Unlike the other districts, this place had no specific theme. It was the area where the super-giant guilds—known as megacorps—gathered, entities too enormous to be described merely as ‘large.’
In a sense, ‘enormity’ itself was the only theme that ran through this street.
Skyscrapers rising endlessly beyond the horizon. And these buildings didn’t even have gears or brass pipes spewing steam. It was a world of colorless modernism that had long surpassed the steampunk aesthetic.
“Isn’t it amazing?”
“Amazing? What is?”
“This street! MegaCorp Street!”
“Should I be amazed?”
“I like you even more now!”
Lord Bawry said.
“As expected, my eyes are spot on. I had a feeling we’d become good friends. Especially since we’re both *shadow mages*!”
Both shadow mages. At those words, Solomon swallowed hard.
“……How did you know I was a shadow mage?”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I simply saw it. The greater the talent, the harder it is to hide—especially for someone like you.”
“……”
Only then did Solomon feel the puzzle pieces in his head finally clicking into place.
All the magic Solomon used was shadow magic. No matter how Lord Bawry had figured it out, there was no way a mage of his caliber—master of a magic tower—would fail to notice.
Besides, the narrator had said he once belonged to one of the Five Great Families of Uptown.
And he specifically said we’re both shadow mages. Could it be…
Among the Five Great Families, only one used shadow magic.
This was no mere coincidence. There was clearly an intentional flow and purpose behind it that could not be hidden.
……No, more importantly, how much does he know about me?
The blood of the Veil Family flowing through Solomon’s veins. The masters of shadow magic, the Shadow Binders.
No, there’s no way he could know that much so easily. Even if he had figured it out, the chances of him reporting it to the Veil Family are low.
Solomon calmly assessed the situation in his mind. After all, shadow magic itself wasn’t that rare outside of the Veil Family. Especially in a city where everyone was only thinking about stabbing each other in the back.
For now, he had no choice but to believe that.
“I am not a mage.”
So he answered.
“I wasn’t born a mage, and I never received training at a magic tower.”
“Don’t you have any guesses?”
“None.”
“It happens sometimes.”
Lord Bawry shrugged as if it were nothing surprising.
“People at the bottom of the city suddenly awakening to an *unexpected talent* they never knew they had.”
Spell Assassin
📍 Description: The Spell Assassin is a fixer who awakened to an *unexpected talent* at the bottom of the city.
📍 Note: A Spell Assassin is not a formally trained mage. Acquiring magic through normal channels is impossible. New spells can be learned upon reaching certain levels.
“It’s not exactly rare for those noble bastards to fool around with their lower halves.”
“……”
“Think about it. There might be the blood of some high-and-mighty noble family flowing through your veins!”
Lord Bawry shrugged and cackled meaningfully.
Nobles. Even in this world of steam and gears, nobles existed.
At the very peak of Guild City—beyond even MegaCorp Street—stood Uptown, ruled by the Five Great Families.
The two of them crossed through District One, where colorless buildings rose as if to swallow the sky.
What was even more surprising was that despite the stench he gave off, no one dared frown or turn their head away from him.
Even the automated machines obsessively guarding District One were no exception.
Everyone passing by acted as if they knew exactly who the man was. Or… as if they could neither see nor feel anything at all.
“So where exactly are you taking me?”
“We’re almost there, bro.”
Lord Bawry said. Solomon stopped and looked at the place he was pointing to.
A narrow alley between the endlessly rising buildings.
“This street has a lot of things. There’s nothing it doesn’t have. Successful suit-wearing businessmen, automated machines that run without steam, financial magic bound by legal restrictions…”
As they deliberately stepped into the damp, shady area behind the buildings, the smell of mold and rust stung their noses.
“And of course, we can’t forget the disgusting sewers!”
Even MegaCorp Street had an underground.
An emergency drain.
Beneath a sign highlighted in red, there was a rusted ladder leading downward. A passage to the deep, dark sewer at the very bottom of the city, so deep its height couldn’t even be estimated. Looking down at it, Lord Bawry spoke.
“Welcome to this body’s shitty ‘tower,’ young and talented shadow mage.”
His voice was filled with the dignity of a tower master, completely devoid of his usual frivolity.