The Tower of Time's Plan
The Ivory Tower's original plan had been to cross over into the Neutral Zone and establish a third territory of their own — and in truth, they had spent years preparing for exactly that. But the Ivory Tower Master and his inner circle had gone one step further.
Even among the selfsame 'Radicals,' only a handful of people knew what that step entailed.
According to the Tower Master, once the seal on the Frozen Clock was broken, it would be driven past the point of rampage — far beyond even the Great Gate Incident. The tower, transformed into a colossal 'time bomb,' would then be relocated to Roke Island and detonated there. That was the heart of it.
Simon asked, his expression gone numb.
"Then... what happens?"
"What happens? Well."
Serne curled the corner of her mouth upward in a smile.
"According to our research, the 'time bomb' would blanket all of Roke Island at minimum, the surrounding seas, and even part of Langoustine. Kizen would be shackled in eternal time and destroyed, utterly and completely."
What was happening inside the Tower of Time right now — the reenactments of the past — was child's play by comparison. When the gate had first opened at the Ivory Tower and the dungeon activated, it had been nothing short of a cataclysm.
Former Ivory Tower Masters, already dead, had manifested to hold the line. Figures from the future had appeared as well. Some had been trapped in the present, able to do nothing but repeat the same actions over and over.
"The most beautiful part of this plan is that it lets us annihilate Nephthys — guaranteed."
Hands clasped together, Serne smiled with artless cheer.
"Because she holds the Authority of Time, she'll be tangled in time all the more — like a knotted thread. It may well be the only chance anyone will ever get to seize Nephthys. As it happens, we've just received word that she's returned to Roke Island."
"......"
"Every last one of these crimes will be pinned on Girdon, the master of spatial magic. The story will be that he seized the 100th floor in his hatred of Kizen and did all of this. And once Kizen is gone, our Ivory Tower will take over the Dark Alliance."
Perhaps it was the sheer weight of what she was telling him, but Simon felt a dull throb building behind his temples.
"And on that note, I have a proposal for you. Simon."
"......?"
"You have no idea how much trouble I went through to spirit you away from that doomed island. Kizen's destruction is a settled fact, and the Dark Alliance will soon belong to our Ivory Tower."
She spread her palm and smiled.
"Come to the Ivory Tower. Simon."
"......"
Simon stared at her for a long moment, then let out a long breath.
"The reason you're recruiting me — is it so I can unseal that 'Frozen Clock'?"
His deduction was razor-sharp. To accomplish the goal they described, one critical obstacle stood in the way: breaking the seal on the dungeon master known as the Frozen Clock.
Only once the seal was undone could it rampage, or whatever else they intended.
But the ice encasing that clock was a seal of the unbreakable kind. Even the Greatsword of Ruin hadn't left so much as a scratch on it.
"Oh, come now~"
Serne made a show of clutching her own cheek.
"Even you, a Legion Commander, couldn't break that seal. That is the 'Absolute Seal' — the magic the Mage of White Frost cast three hundred years ago at the cost of his own life."
Simon's eyes went wide.
'......The Absolute Seal?'
"A pure elemental spell that offers up the caster's life in exchange for trapping the target in unbreakable ice, sealing them away for all eternity. And the only way to release an Absolute Seal is to cast another Absolute Seal — the exact same spell — over it once more."
Simon's mouth fell open.
"Hold on. You're saying the caster's life has to be sacrificed?"
"Yes. And even so, it's a technique not just anyone can perform. Only a mage blessed by the spirits can do it — or, within the Ivory Tower, one who inherited the blood of the Mage of White Frost thickly enough. And very recently, a talent like that was born."
She clicked her tongue.
"Do you know who it is? Someone you know quite well, Simon......"
"Serne!"
Simon's voice came out rough and raw.
"Don't tell me you mean Mayrin......!"
"We can't save everyone. It's an unavoidable sacrifice."
She wore a smile that crawled under the skin.
"At least one person has to be given up."
Simon's lips trembled.
"......Are you being serious right now?"
"I am, entirely. But never mind that — Simon? Come to the Ivory Tower. This is the only path left where you survive."
Simon gritted his teeth.
"I refuse any offer that amounts to 'crawl along and save your own neck.'"
"Ah. So that was a no after all."
The smile drained out of Serne's face, and it froze over, cold and smooth.
"Then there's nothing to be done."
Her hair swept upward on the wind. Countless pure-white feathers erupted around her, whirling in orbits through the air. Simon, too, brought the Greatsword of Ruin up before him.
"The first time we've crossed blades since the island survival exam in first year, isn't it?"
Their two jet-black auras surged upward, vying to outclimb each other.
Battle against Serne.
Even wielding the full strength of a Legion Commander, there was no clear victor between them. Simon slowly drew back the greatsword's hilt, and Serne reshaped her feathers into the geometry of a magic circle.
"Ready?"
"......"
The air stretched taut between them, and two waves of jet-black collided head-on.
The instant the two of them were about to clash in earnest—
"I concede."
Bang!
Simon dropped the tip of his greatsword first. Serne, who had been braced to fight, blinked at him in open puzzlement.
"Serne, you seem to think you're the only one who observes and analyzes other people. That's a mistake. The rest of us have been observing and analyzing you this whole time, too."
Simon's breathing grew ragged.
"Whenever you're testing someone, you always wear that same smile. When you're teasing. When you want to see how someone reacts. When you fight Mayrin. And it was there when you fought me, too."
"Is that...... so?"
Serne blinked, as though hearing it for the very first time. Simon spread his arms wide.
"If you'd genuinely meant to make me your accomplice — 'join the Ivory Tower or die' — that idiotic pitch? You'd never have tried to persuade me with something so clumsy. You've watched me from close enough, for long enough, to know exactly what kind of person I am."
"......"
"You could have strung me along with a well-placed lie. So why go out of your way to lay the entire truth bare under the pretext of recruiting me? Why even say Mayrin would be sacrificed? You're hoping I'll recognize something in all this information. Am I wrong?"
Strength gathered in Simon's eyes.
"What is it you actually want, Serne?"
Heh.
Heh-heh-heh.
Covering her face with one hand, she laughed, her shoulders trembling.
"I really can't get the better of you."
When she finally lowered her hand and let her arms fall, there was something tangled and unreadable written across her face.
"Did I not tell you before, Serne?"
"Trying to sound out that stubborn friend of yours is a waste of effort."
The third voice came from nowhere, and Simon's head snapped toward it.
The Ghost of Time — the very specter he had been searching for — was drawing near.
The two of them seemed to know each other. Simon looked back and forth between them, bewildered, and the Ghost of Time spoke.
"Heh heh. Did I not mention it once before? The matter of who has been taking my research."
'Ah.'
— Every now and then I leave my research findings out on the windowsill. And there's someone who comes every single day to take them, register them as her own work, and climb her way to the very top of the Ivory Tower!
So it had been Serne all along.
Only now could Simon begin to grasp how the whole situation fit together. And he thought he understood, at least in part, why the Ghost of Time had shown him Serne and Mayrin's past — all to stop the catastrophe unfolding in this tower.
"To reach the whole truth, one last piece remains."
Light rippled in the Ghost's palm.
"A minute or so should be enough."
WHOOOOSH!
Simon's vision was swallowed whole.
"The way you are now, you'll be dead before long. Will you follow me?"
"From today onward, I am your father. I will make you the greatest human being on the continent."
Young Serne had followed the Ivory Tower Master into the tower.
Just as he had warned her, the people within treated her with uniform loathing and contempt. And yet.
"Hi there, Serne! I'm Mayrin. It's your first time here, right? Come play with me!"
In that unfamiliar place, Mayrin was a single ray of hope in Serne's world.
The one child who should have been warier of Serne than anyone was kinder to her than anyone. Even the adults waging their political offensives seemed to feel a flicker of shame, and the sharp-edged chorus of hostility began to soften.
And so Serne and Mayrin became inseparable friends.
To each of them, the other was the most precious thing in the world.
"When I grow up, I'm going to become the Ivory Tower Master."
Mayrin set her sights on that seat with total earnestness.
"I promise, Mayrin. I'll make you the Ivory Tower Master."
Serne cheered that dream on with everything she had.
The two of them believed, without a shadow of doubt, that their friendship would last forever.
But.
The moment they learned the truth, everything shattered.
The Tower Master — who gave her nothing beyond her magical studies, who all but abandoned Serne to her own devices — summoned her to his office one day.
"Magnificent."
he said, marveling. Resting on the desk before him was the Orb of the Ice Emperor — the one Serne had frozen. It had not merely frozen over; jagged icicles bristled up from its surface.
"Do you know what the Orb of the Ice Emperor actually is?"
At his question, Serne shook her head.
"I've never heard the details. Only that the adults say anyone who freezes this orb is a truly remarkable mage......"
"I see."
The Tower Master cleanly stripped away the ice coating the orb and set it down on the table.
"This orb was made three hundred years ago by the 'Mage of White Frost' — the man who sealed the Tower of Time — as a training implement for his ice magic."
"Ah......"
"Freezing this orb requires an innate gift for ice magic. No — 'the blessing of the spirits' would be the more accurate term."
The Tower Master cast ice magic upon the orb, but even as a monstrous torrent of mana churned, the orb refused to freeze. Only the desk beneath it frosted over, stiff and useless.
"In all the centuries since the Mage of White Frost, only two mages have frozen even a sliver of this orb with their mana."
"......"
The Tower Master set the orb down.
"Our Ivory Tower has wandered, for ages upon ages, in search of a child blessed the way the Mage of White Frost was blessed."
"Why? A powerful mage doesn't have to be an ice specialist, does he......?"
"To undo the 'Absolute Seal' that the Mage of White Frost cast."
And so the Tower Master laid out the plan the Ivory Tower had been preparing since long before her arrival: the relocation to the Neutral Zone. The Absolute Seal, cast at the price of a human life. And the fact that such a seal could only be broken by another Absolute Seal of the very same kind.
When he finished, Serne shot to her feet in shock.
"W-wait a moment! Then that means......!"
"Yes."
The Tower Master closed his eyes.
"Mayrin becomes the Ivory Tower Master at twenty. And as the one who must stand guard over the tower, she will honor the tower's noble will and offer up her own life to release the seal within the Tower of Time."
"......!"
Serne, frozen in place with her mouth hanging open, erupted.
"Wh-why?! I won't accept this! Why does Mayrin have to be sacrificed for the tower's sake? What about Mayrin's own wishes?!"
"It is a glorious thing. Human life is short, but her name will remain in the Ivory Tower for all eternity."
"What good is a name to someone who dies an unjust death?! That isn't sacrifice — that's murder!"
It was the first time Serne had ever shown him such open defiance, and the Tower Master was inwardly taken aback. But his voice stayed level.
"Sacrifice is unavoidable. If we let time flow on as it has, our Ivory Tower will be dragged into Kizen's undertow and torn to ribbons."
He slowly lowered his hand onto her head.
"You are a clever child; I trust you'll understand. And from now on, stop freezing the Orb of the Ice Emperor to draw the adults' eyes. It will be Mayrin who unseals the Frozen Clock. And after she is gone, once you become the Tower Master......"
Smack!
Serne slapped his hand away with rough force and seized the Orb of the Ice Emperor in her grip.
"No, Father. Mayrin doesn't have the ability to do it."
SHHHKRACK!
As she poured her power into the orb, ice erupted from it in wild spires.
"Look at this! I froze the Orb of the Ice Emperor this far! Mayrin could never do this!"
The entire plan rested on a single premise: that Mayrin could undo the Absolute Seal.
Could merely frosting over the surface of an orb truly release an Absolute Seal? If it failed, Mayrin's innocent life would be thrown away for nothing.
Serne was driving her argument straight into exactly that fatal flaw.
"Serne, you are our hope. That a perfect child like you should be sacrificed in place of that defective......"
She shouted back at him with eyes bloodshot red.
"Let me say this clearly — on this one thing, I will not yield!"
"Serne!"
"I will become the Ivory Tower Master!!"
She roared back without an inch of retreat.
"I will be the one to undo the Absolute Seal......!"
Tap-tap—
Just then, something like footsteps sounded from far away. Serne flinched and whipped her head around, but the footsteps had already vanished.
"Is that the truth of it? You would die in that girl's place?"
The Tower Master studied her with a gaze like a millstone turning.
"Yes. With everything I have."
Serne clenched her teeth.
"From this moment on, I will become the Ivory Tower Master by any means necessary. And I will undo the Absolute Seal with these hands of mine."
SHAAAAAAA—
With that, the memory ended. In the haze of the fading vision, Simon reeled beneath the weight of it all.
'Then Serne, from the very beginning......'
Everything had been for Mayrin.
The reason she had clawed her way toward the Ivory Tower Master's seat was to earn the right to cast the Absolute Seal — so that she could be the one to die in Mayrin's place.
Even the way Serne needled and provoked Mayrin, even the fact that she had made jet-black flame magic her specialty instead — every bit of it was a countermeasure to keep Mayrin bound to their rivalry, so that her true gift, ice magic, would never be allowed to grow.
"I promise. I'll make you the Ivory Tower Master."
Serne had never lied.
If she sacrificed herself and vanished, the next Ivory Tower Master's seat would pass, quite naturally, to Mayrin.
'That's......!'
Simon bit down hard on his lip.
Before long, the blurred haze cleared and his vision returned to normal.
"!"
Simon felt that his arms and legs had been pinned fast against the wall. Feathers had sunk into his body, and no jet-black would come. He couldn't even feel the faint tether of consciousness that bound him to his undead.
He looked ahead. The Ghost of Time stood with his head bowed, his expression a tangle of sorrow, while Serne smiled her sweet, easy smile.
"Wh-what is this, Serne?!"
"I'm sorry, Simon. Just stay like that for a little while."
With those words, Serne walked toward the Frozen Clock.
"If I left you free to move, you'd tear into me, after all."
"Don't tell me you......!"
She laid her hand upon the Frozen Clock.
"Do you remember fighting alongside me in Tarados? When we entered the dungeon the Cabal had seized, I was watching every single thing through my feathers."
"Serne! Wait! Undo this and talk to me!"
She clicked her tongue.
"And while I was watching~ I noticed that the Greatsword of Ruin you're carrying has picked up a new function. The ability to absorb a dungeon master and seize control of a dungeon, if I recall?"
"......!"
"When I undo the Absolute Seal now, I will die. And when I die, the spell binding you will come undone with me. At that moment—"
Serne beamed at him, radiant and bright.
"Use that sword of yours to absorb the dungeon master trapped inside the seal, and take this dungeon for yourself."
That was the only path she could see to stopping the Ivory Tower Master's plan — or so Serne had judged.
Simon's face contorted in anguish.
"You hated Kizen, didn't you? Then why......! Why would you go this far to betray the Ivory Tower Master?!"
"Because—"
Serne smiled, sharp and sweet.
"Our father, the Ivory Tower Master, is one of the Cabal's own threads."
"......What?"
"The documents from the Tarados dungeon — you thought you and Loraine split them evenly between you, but I quietly pocketed a few of my own. And on the membership list inside, there was a very interesting name."
A chill crystallized in her eyes.
"A human being worth nothing more than that. Thanks to this opportunity he can break Kizen — but that isn't the road to our Ivory Tower's greatness. It's being used and played like a toy by the Cabal. And that, I will not tolerate. If we destroy Kizen, they'll no doubt try to swallow the Dark Alliance next."
"Serne......!"
"And above all—"
Serne gave a sly, sidelong smile.
"That man keeps insisting Simon has to die. It's grating."
Sacrifice is unavoidable.
"Sacrifice is unavoidable. For you and for Mayrin — this is the only way to save you both."
Serne took her hand off the Frozen Clock and walked slowly toward Simon. Then, still smiling, she caressed his cheek.
"Simon, do you remember when we first met, back in first year?"
"......"
"During the island survival exam, Loraine and I were mid-fight when you barged right in and, of all things, asked us for help. The three of us pooled our strength and brought down that enormous giant undead together."
"Serne......!"
"Oh, and during Battle Arts class — remember when I taught you internal jet-black differentiation? I slipped in a backhug then, too."
One point, for fighting the Saintess of Purification side by side.
Two points, for toppling the Cabal together in Tarados.
Hair hanging loose around her face, Serne recited it all in a flat, even voice. And every time she mentioned those coupons, her memories with him bloomed fresh and vivid, like frames unspooling in a panorama.
"This is my last request. I never did fill out all ten — but I'm going to spend every single one of these coupons."
Her voice trembling, she laid her hand over Simon's heart.
"When I die, stop the Ivory Tower Master's plan. You promise?"
She drew her hand back from his cheek and turned to walk away — and Simon thrashed against his bindings with everything he had.
"Serne!! Wait!"
Simon roared.
"Don't do this! I'll find a way — I swear I'll figure something out! There has to be a better answer! You don't have to die here! Please......!"
"I'm sorry."
Serne unleashed the dark magic she had prepared. A magic circle unfurled across her entire body, and circles upon the ceiling and the walls shivered into resonance, echoing it like a chorus. Draped in a cloak of overlapping spellwork, she threw her arms around the Frozen Clock and embraced it.
"Take care of yourself, Simon."
"SERNEEEEE!"
A blaze of blinding light and a deafening roar swallowed the ice whole.