O Truth, Vouchsafe Us a Recipe
The weekend.
By all rights, a Saturday meant for rest—but alas, club activities had claimed me.
What a pain.
Yaaawn. I looked over the cursed items as I yawned. I'd picked them for the strength of their curses rather than their usefulness—if it came to it, I could hurl one at an enemy and throw them into chaos.
"For casual wear, you really didn't put much effort in, did you?"
"...What's wrong with a hoodie?"
Erciel was picking a fight.
"The hoodie isn't the problem—the color coordination is. How does one pair black jeans with a black hoodie..."
I tuned her out with practiced ease. All-black was a perfectly legitimate fashion choice, thank you very much.
"So, are you heading out somewhere?"
"Yeah. Yuhwa got me a ticket to enter a tower."
"A tower—the Tower of False Dreams, I presume?"
Erciel looked up at me with eyes brimming with curiosity.
"Yep. Britain has one too, doesn't it? The Tower of Proof, was it?"
"It does, but the Tower of Proof only admits those of High Tier and above."
"Want to go?"
"Yes."
"Well, too bad. This one's solo entry only."
I waved the emblem Hong Yuhwa had given me. Erciel's face crumpled into a sulk.
"How about we meet on Sunday instead, then?"
"Sunday? My, my—don't tell me that's a date invitation?"
She flashed a sly, impish grin, brimming with mischief.
"Yep. It's a date invitation."
I nodded, deadpan. Of course, the date itinerary included a banquet with demons.
At my nod, Erciel's face went blank for a moment.
"Y-you mustn't toy with a lady like that."
I shrugged. She was the one who'd started it.
"So, when should I be there?"
"By one in the afternoon. Come to the Angel's Hand café in Gangnam, Seoul."
The incident would go down at two, so I'd built in a comfortable buffer.
"See you tomorrow, then."
I waved to Erciel and headed for the classroom next door.
"Hm? What can I do for you?"
"I'd like to borrow some of the items here."
I laid out roughly ten cursed objects.
"...I did say to take as many as you liked, no need to hold back. I just never dreamed you'd take me quite so literally."
The club president chuckled, wrote my name down on the form, and nodded.
"Just bring them back in one piece. Every one of these is cursed—if an item gets crushed, there's a chance the curse leaks out."
"Understood. I'll be careful."
That was what I said, anyway. Whether they'd come back intact was another question entirely.
Permission secured, I headed for the alchemy lab. Just yesterday, the alchemy professor had told me someone had stopped by the lab looking for me.
Oh, right.
On the way, I fired off a text to Hong Yuhwa. She'd skipped club activities for the day, citing personal business.
There would be a fight with demons, but I couldn't exactly come out and say that, so I kept it vague. She'd figure out what to bring on her own.
Ding.
The reply came the instant my message landed.
Games? Puzzled, I texted back.
I left it at that and opened my group chat.
In my past life, this chat had held three hundred people. Now it had exactly four. Erciel and Hong Yuhwa had used club activities as a pretext to get my number; Kim Ara had gotten hers under the pretense of training, and Kim Seohyun was much the same.
Would be nice if I could call on Seo Gayeon, too.
She hadn't yet bloomed her mana, so she couldn't count as fighting strength. A shame. Settling for second best, I invited Kim Ara as well and told her to head for the Angel's Hand café in Gangnam.
Come to think of it, she was a shy one under all that bluntness.
I pocketed my phone. The roster was set.
Erciel as a safety net if things went sideways, plus Hong Yuhwa and Kim Ara—both immediately deployable fighting forces. Add Kim Seohyun to that, and we were hardly a lineup that would lose to a few demons.
"Master... do you perhaps not treasure your life?"
"...?"
The Heukcheon Demonic Sword's question gave me pause.
"Of course I treasure my life. Why else would I be preparing all this?"
I said it as I stepped into the alchemy lab, stowing potions away in my subspace bracelet. The sword gave me an odd look.
"Come to think of it, my previous master was every bit as oblivious, yet strangely popular with the ladies. Despite having a woman's body... Is such the fate of a Heavenly Demon?"
Be that as it may, I rummaged through the lab's ingredients.
Not bad at all.
There were more materials than I'd expected. I could brew a decent stock of recovery potions for emergencies. I packed paralytics, antidotes, and the like for when things got dicey. Then there was the ultra-lethal poison, brewed by deliberately botching part of a recipe with a few extra toxins, right down to potions that pumped my stats through the roof.
Even with all that, my luggage stayed surprisingly compact, thanks to the subspace bracelet.
Might as well check my bank account.
Normally, buying that kit would have left me with less than 50,000 won to my name, but I'd uploaded recipes to the Alchemy Guild, so I could afford some expectations.
"Whoa..."
I was left speechless. A staggering sum had landed in my account.
The truly frightening part was that alchemy carried strong copyright protections—which meant this money would only keep snowballing as time went on. I'd have to keep the Alchemy Guild happy, that much was clear.
I switched on the computer tucked into a corner of the lab and, puzzled, clicked into my recipe page.
My inbox was stuffed with private messages, too. Some were downright threatening; others begged me to teach them just a single trick. One was titled:
[Got a Question About the Elixir of Stamina]
But it was the sender's ID, more than the title, that caught my eye: WantToEscapeTheLab—the alchemist who would one day make a name for himself in the field.
With that piece of advice as my parting read, I shut down the computer. It was about time to head out.
Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt!
My phone went off. What now? Nobody should have been trying to reach me. I pulled it out, silenced the app notifications, and stepped outside.
Guro Station.
Right in its heart stood a building known simply as the Tower.
Towers. In this world, there existed things called towers. The most famous among them was the Tower of Ordeals at Korea Hero Academy.
The Tower of Ordeals did exactly what its name promised: it handed down ordeals. Clear one, and you received a reward to match. That was what towers were.
Depending on the word preceding its name, a tower took on a fitting "theme," and clearing it granted tremendous rewards. The difficulty, however, varied wildly from tower to tower. Some could be cleared by simply steamrolling them with sheer numbers. Others posed riddles.
A handful of such towers existed in this world, and one called the Tower of False Dreams stood in Seoul. Among them, the Tower of False Dreams ranked among the most difficult.
But it suited me perfectly. Because the Tower of False Dreams, true to its name, did nothing but show illusions.
Things do change a bit from the middle floors up, though.
What I needed was on the lower floors anyway. From the middle floors onward, the tower devoured far too much time—even with days set aside, it would take a month.
I made my way to the guide stationed near the tower.
"How may I help you?"
"I'd like to enter the tower."
"To enter the tower, you will need a letter of recommendation from the Magic Tower, or a corresponding token."
The Tower of False Dreams belonged to the Magic Tower, after all.
The Magic Tower should be fine.
It was among the well-managed ones. They threw the book at demons and Villains who tried to sneak into their towers, and they took security within seriously.
I presented the emblem Hong Yuhwa had handed me.
"A token of the Red Tower, I see."
The clerk held the emblem up to a scanner and nodded.
"Confirmed. You may now enter the Tower of False Dreams. Should you require a briefing on the tower, you may pay a fee to hire a mage from our Magic Tower."
"I'm fine, thank you."
"Then please use the portal over there to enter."
"Will do."
I walked the path the clerk indicated, and a portal came into view—a blue circle with another space shimmering within it.
Riiing.
Right before I stepped into the tower, my phone rang. I checked it.
There was real worry threaded through those messages. I smirked despite myself.
I had no intention of poking at anything, either.
But if, say, I entered the tower and happened to stumble upon a "Secret Room," and happened to clear it, and happened to pocket the rewards...
Well. These things happen.