Overwhelming Presence
“Hey, Elsi. Which galleries are gathering at the main tower of the Black Magic Tower?”
“The Pottery Gallery, the Magic Gallery, the Adventurer Gallery, and the Dimension History Gallery.”
“And the others are meeting at Black Magic Tower branches, right? Which ones?”
“The Blacksmith Gallery and Peddler Gallery are at the Third Branch. The Leatherworker Gallery and Bard Gallery are at the Sixth.”
“Understood. And just to be safe… there aren’t any troublemakers or problematic types among the gallery members, are there?”
I shook my head at the Third Elder’s question.
“I don’t know.”
Yeah.
I didn’t know.
I could only see the posts they uploaded to the galleries. Who those people actually were in real life was completely beyond me.
I had drawn up a list of persons of interest based on their gallery activity, but there was no way of knowing how any of those beings would actually present themselves.
Surely we won’t get a real ancient dragon or a continent-class criminal or some lunatic like that showing up.
Please, just let this end without incident.
With that thought, I hurried through the final preparations at the gathering site. I was anxious, sure—but not knowing who would walk through the door was half the fun of a real-life meetup, wasn’t it?
That was the whole point of today’s main event game, too.
“It’ll be fine. The Black Magic Tower may specialize in spatial teleportation, but our combat magic isn’t exactly lacking either. No sane person is going to start a riot inside a Magic Tower that holds a seat on Rune’s Round Table.”
“Yes, Third Elder. I’m sure you’re right.”
“Good. Let’s make this gathering a success.”
The Third Elder’s eyes burned bright. This was no ordinary meetup.
Look at the list of galleries coming to the main tower. Pottery Gallery. Magic Gallery. Adventurer Gallery. Dimension History Gallery.
Famous artisans. Fellow mages. The Adventurer Gallery—supposedly a gathering of the strongest fighters on the continent. And the Dimension History Gallery, packed with maesters and scholars who had been the benefactors that saved both the Black Magic Tower and Soulnet.
“This is the perfect chance to pitch the new long-range teleport scrolls we developed at the Black Magic Tower. And to talk about advertising on Soulnet, of course. Heh heh heh heh.”
The way he rubbed his hands together, he looked less like a mage and more like Scrooge himself. At a glance, you couldn’t tell whether he was a wizard or a loan shark.
Well. Thanks to the Third Elder taking full charge of Soulnet’s advertising, my own life had gotten considerably freer. I was grateful for that kind of enthusiasm.
“Jump Point, active!”
“Long-range teleportation circle, active!”
“Access codes match the Soulnet real-life meetup winners list!”
And right in the middle of all that preparation, the winners of Soulnet’s real-life meetup event finally began to pour in.
The first gallery to show itself was—
“Haha! Well, look who it is! First time since the Rune’s Round Table meeting!”
“You’ve been well, I trust! I hear you’re serving as Third Elder of the Black Magic Tower!”
“I heard the Crimson Magic Tower keeps you busy—delighted you could make it! Come, this way!”
The Magic Gallery members.
Elderly elders from various Magic Towers, dressed with meticulous formality. Figures who looked like Apprentice Mages. People whose names I’d heard at least once in passing started filing in one after another.
But that wasn’t where the real charm of a gallery meetup ended.
“We’ll be handing out name tags with the Soulnet nicknames of all winners!”
The real fun was the moment those Soulnet nicknames were revealed.
“So you’re CornerBear? Pwahaha! No wonder you were ridiculously deep into ice magic!”
“Tower Lord, what’s with the nickname CrimsonTowerLord? There’s zero fun in that.”
“Haha. I’m not as witty as the rest of you. Still, your nickname is hilariously well chosen—ThesisMachine.”
Everyone snickered as they looked at one another’s Soulnet nicknames. As expected, most of the heavy posters in the Magic Gallery turned out to be Magic Tower affiliates.
Maybe that was why—
“Magic Gallery users! We’ve prepared a little game for you. We’ve selected a few celebrities among the gallery members. The game is to guess their real-world identities! And the person we’re guessing this time is… this one!”
When the game to guess the identity of the Magic Gallery’s manager began, the Magic Gallery’s reaction was lukewarm at best.
“Isn’t that Archmage Coldrock of the Twilight Magic Tower?”
“Well. Isn’t that the obvious answer?”
And that lukewarm reaction was the truth.
“So everyone’s already gathered!”
Because Coldrock—Lord of the Twilight Magic Tower and an Archmage—really was the Magic Gallery’s manager.
The ambitious “guess the gallery member’s real identity” game I’d prepared wasn’t particularly fun, at least not for the Magic Gallery. Given the gallery’s nature, most of them could already work out who was who, so the reactions stayed tepid.
“Hahaha! Thanks to the Black Magic Tower, the trip was a breeze! Your teleportation magic has matured another notch!”
“Incidentally, I thoroughly enjoyed the paper you published in the gallery. Quite an unusual choice of topic.”
“I’ve brought a few of the gallery’s circulating theories I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. I’d very much like to hear Lord Coldrock’s advice on them…”
But it didn’t matter. The game I’d prepared might have fallen flat, yet once the brilliant mages and Apprentice Mages mixed together, magic talk ignited on its own and the heat rose fast.
“This is the new long-range teleport scroll developed by the Black Magic Tower! Haha! Take a look! I’d love to hear your appraisal of it! Ah—and if any Magic Tower representatives wish to advertise on Soulnet, please come speak with me!”
And the Third Elder, while handing out his name cards, passionately promoted both Soulnet advertising and the Black Magic Tower’s scrolls.
Well…
It was a very Magic Gallery kind of scene.
That didn’t mean my “who is this gallery member in real life?” game was a failure overall, though.
“What—MudTouchingHand was you? Master Rigola?!”
“Look carefully at the posts I made in the gallery! The pottery techniques, the glazing methods—anyone can tell that’s southern style! No one else handles pottery at that level! It’s obvious! Hahaha!”
When the Pottery Gallery members gathered, the game set the place on fire. Unlike the Magic Gallery, most of them had stayed anonymous or chosen nicknames that made them hard to identify, so the gap between real identity and username was huge—and every reveal set off an explosion of reactions.
“You were the one who advised me on my glazing technique?”
“That’s right.”
“It was identical to the points my master used to criticize, so I had a feeling… and I was right. With an eye like that, why were you always so sharp-tongued about my pottery pieces?”
“If you’d read my damn posts, you’d know! One of my hands has been stiffening—it’s gotten harder and harder to make anything new! So…”
“Then why didn’t you just say so earlier?”
“Would you have said it? It was a gallery. I hid behind anonymity and ran my mouth.”
“Then let’s look for a way to treat it together.”
And at the Pottery Gallery’s real-life meetup, something unexpected happened. Two master artisans from rival kingdoms—famous for being bitter enemies—came to understand each other and reconcile.
In that warm atmosphere, they debated how to help the craftsman whose hand was stiffening, discussed pottery techniques, and more. The Pottery Gallery enjoyed its real-life gathering in a quiet, steady way.
But the nickname-to-real-identity guessing game hit its absolute peak with the Dimension History Gallery.
“I’mAnAncientDragon. In my view, this person is clearly a maester of considerable scholarly standing.”
“With knowledge of that caliber, they’d more than deserve the title of maester!”
“I suspect an archaeologist. Too many references that sound like firsthand fieldwork for a pure historian.”
“West, east, south, and even the far north—there doesn’t seem to be a place they haven’t been. I can’t even tell which academic society they belong to.”
“Wouldn’t they be affiliated with the Valrod Empire? The Empire sits more or less in the center, so access to many regions would be easier, wouldn’t it?”
“That doesn’t explain their grasp of regional dialects—or the cultures of other races.”
“What if it isn’t a single person?”
“This is a joke, but… what if they really are an ancient dragon?”
“Why would an ancient dragon run a gallery? I’d put my money on an elf.”
In that explosive atmosphere, elderly maesters, historians, and archaeologists passionately debated the identity—and still never arrived at an answer. And because the member using the nickname I’mAnAncientDragon never showed up, the truth remained forever out of reach.
Still. Making those guesses was the whole fun of the game, so the Dimension History Gallery members seemed largely satisfied.
And so, while the Pottery Gallery, the Magic Gallery, and the Dimension History Gallery were all thoroughly enjoying their real-life meetup—
“Aaaah! Sorry! Had to beat up some bastards in a dungeon!”
—beings radiating a dynamic, utterly absurd force completely unlike the quiet scholars, artisans, and mages began appearing in the main tower of the Black Magic Tower.
Adventurers.
Unlike the other galleries, the Adventurer Gallery’s membership spectrum was absurdly wide.
“Fucking hell, these magic scrolls are a pain in the ass to use!”
“That’s because you’re an idiot!”
Northern barbarians.
“Haha. Well, well. Isn’t this the little rat who cleaned out the treasure in my secret vault?”
“Didn’t think you’d have the nerve to shove that face in here. Filthy whore.”
“I’ll shove a dagger up your cunt and stir it around, you fucking bitch.”
Rangers and assassins who, the moment they laid eyes on each other, drew daggers amid a storm of curses.
And above all—
“Uwahahaha! Exactly the faces I expected! Good to see you, you sons of bitches! I’m the manager of the Adventurer Gallery and Guildmaster of the Adventurer Guild!”
“Holy shit—he really is the Guildmaster?”
“In that case, we’ve got to throw down, right?”
“Pwahaha! Come on, you scrawny little brats! You think you can take an S-rank?”
“This is our chance! Get on the Guildmaster’s good side and you can climb the ladder!”
“Let’s set up a fighting ring! Hey! You mage lords of the Black Magic Tower! We can use this space, yeah? Huh?”
The Guildmaster himself—the one who should have been reining in this entire mess—was the first one charging in, yelling for a fight.
The refined debates of artisans, scholars, and mages began collapsing under the noise of this free-for-all chaos.
“Please! There are members from other galleries here! Guildmaster, control them a little—!”
“Hey! Elsi Bwener! We’re loving that gallery you made! Pwahaha! If you ever want to quit being a mage and go adventuring, come find me anytime. We’re always short on mages!”
“Th-the daggers! Those people are swinging daggers! Please make them stop!”
“Eh. Assassins and rangers never get along. They’re just playing. Come on, come on! Let’s settle this properly with a tournament!”
I desperately tried to get the adventurers under control, but rough adventurers had no reason to listen to me. The atmosphere was in ruins. Black Magic Tower mages started quietly discussing whether they should start casting combat magic. Members of the other galleries were frowning and beginning to rise from their seats—
And in that exact moment.
“High mana signature confirmed!”
“What? What’s coming through?”
“Access code is a Soulnet event winner code!”
“It’s forcing open! We can’t stop it! What in the—!”
With a brilliant flash, one of the Jump Points was forcibly torn open, and someone began walking through it.
Every adventurer who had been making a noisy nuisance of themselves froze in place.
Archmage Coldrock—manager of the Magic Gallery and Lord of the Twilight Magic Tower—widened his eyes.
The historians and archaeologists’ jaws dropped.
The Pottery Gallery’s master artisans went pale.
You could feel it.
An overwhelming pressure and presence the likes of which none of us had ever experienced in our lives.
No special magic had been cast. It was simply presence itself. The sheer grade radiating from the soul was immense.
Long, deep blue hair.
An outfit so revealing it barely qualified as clothing.
Bare skin.
“Where’s the Adventurer Gallery real-life meetup?”
And a smile that looked faintly, dangerously irritated.
She strode into the room without hesitation and dropped herself into a chair prepared for Adventurer Gallery members.
On the table in front of that chair lay a single name tag.
“All you bastards who called me a liar and a fraud—go on. Talk that shit now. And stop making a classless scene. Can’t you see you’re bothering everyone else?”
She stuck the name tag onto clothing that covered less than it exposed—closer to scraps of cloth than an outfit—and grinned.
“Sit down, you bastards.”
The Adventurer Gallery members turned into lambs.
With perfect courtesy and manners, they went to their assigned seats and sat.