The Archmage Who Would Not Cry

There once lived a mage named Dekaron, the greatest in the history of the continent.

He surpassed the ninth circle, the realm of archmages, and became the first human ever to reach the tenth circle—a domain called the territory of the gods. Born into an age of war, he brought the continent's wars to an end by his strength alone, and he achieved everything it was possible for a person to achieve.

Dekaron had lived for centuries, far beyond the span of any human life, and at the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠last he prepared reincarnation, a magic of the tenth circle.

In the instant before he cast it, the man who had spent an entire lifetime amid war and secret struggle held only a single wish.

In the next life, let me be born somewhere peaceful. Somewhere without war, or fighting.

A maternity ward, somewhere in South Korea.

The mother lay in her bed with the newborn she had just delivered gathered in her arms, her eyes shining with tears.

A nurse who had been watching her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spoke.

"The baby isn't crying. They need to cry for the fluids to clear out..."

"Then what do we do...?"

"I'll ask the doctor. I've never seen a baby stay this quiet..."

Dekaron, cradled in his mother's arms—no. The infant who had been reborn as Lee Woojin of South Korea turned the matter over.

Er... am I supposed to cry?

It was reincarnation magic, cast for the first time in human history, and there was a truth even Dekaron had not known until he performed it himself: he had come back with every memory of his previous life intact.

For Lee Woojin, born with the memories of a tenth-circle archmage preserved in full, the studying of his school years was far too easy. What people called a mathematical formula was incomparably simpler than a magical one. If he had to name the single difficult thing about going to school, it was having to match himself to the childishness of children his own age.

Not once did Woojin surrender first place in his entire school, and at twenty he entered Korea University College of Medicine, the most prestigious institution in the nation.

His second life, too, was proceeding down a smooth and certain road. There was only one worry.

The Black Tower.

From around the time of Woojin's reincarnation, an unknown tower had stood across the whole of the world. The rules were simple. Climb one floor each month, or upgrade the clear rank of a previous floor, and thirty days were added to the Grace Period. If the Grace Period reached zero, the entire population died.

In the tower's earliest days, several nations met their end. The world seemed ready to collapse, and yet a great many countries fought tooth and nail and survived. Those that endured the catastrophe established Tower Management Bureaus and climbed with the survival of their nations at stake.

South Korea was currently challenging Floor 65. Even by the measure of the whole world, that was a height among the very highest. The difficulty of the climb, however, was growing harsher by the floor and pressing against its limit, and the floors below—most of them beginning at D-Rank—had already been upgraded all the way to A-Rank, the highest rank there was.

On the day Woojin turned twenty, a message rose before his eyes.

Anyone who turned twenty could challenge the Tower. It was a fact every citizen of South Korea was taught from childhood. Woojin, however, had never felt any particular need to try.

The mana of the world Dekaron had lived in and the mana of the world he now inhabited as Woojin were the same. And yet, for some reason, even when he arranged that mana correctly, the magic would not cast. It was as if some omnipotent, godlike being had rewritten the laws of physics and sealed magic away at the level of the system itself. Water set over a fire ought to boil—that was simple cause and effect—and this was like stoking the flames as hot as they would go while the water sat there, stubbornly still. An utterly inexplicable phenomenon. He could guess the reason well enough.

Magic could be learned from the skill books obtained inside the Tower.

So magic can only be used once you've learned it from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a skill book.

Even so, mages were vanishingly rare among the hunters who climbed the Tower. Magic skill books could be purchased with gold, the currency earned inside, but set against how wretchedly weak the magic was, the prices were absurd—so high they defied all reason. In a word, the cost never paid for itself.

Become a hunter, and you were granted 100 gold to start. A hundred gold would buy a full set of beginner equipment, and in a full set the lower floors were not difficult to clear. Spend that same gold on a magic skill book, however, and you learned exactly one basic spell—Fireball—then had to fight bare-handed, with no gear at all. One Fireball and an empty pair of hands were not enough to get through even Floor 1. Worse, the skill books above Fireball only grew more astronomically expensive from there. For that reason, anyone who chose to become a mage was treated like a fool.

And Woojin had already had his fill of war and battle in his previous life, more than enough to last him. If he could wield magic as freely as he once had, it might have been different. He had no wish to go looking for hardship. So he lived on, deliberately turning his face from the Tower. The situation, however, was changing.

Lee Woojin's home. A report on the Tower was playing on the television.

They had held on this far by the skin of their teeth, but the climb grew harder without end, and even rising a single floor was becoming too much to manage. If Floor 65 could not be cleared, the time left to South Korea was four months at the outside.

Woojin had no choice but to turn it over. The death of every person in the nation. It was not only a matter of righteousness. His own life was staked on it.

If he was going to enter, he had to begin as soon as he could and climb high enough that upgrading a rank, or breaking through a floor, was something he could actually do.

I don't have a choice. I have to go in.

There was no other path. To live on with his back turned to the Tower, only to die a meaningless death, would make the whole of his reincarnation pointless.

Hunters came in two kinds. Official hunters, who registered formally with the Tower Management Bureau and worked with its support, and unofficial hunters, who never registered and made their living by selling the materials that came out of the Tower.

For the time being, Woojin meant to go in and see how things stood, rather than register. The reason was simple. A mage's performance was said to be so garbage that he had no confidence in how far he would actually be able to climb. And yet strapping on equipment and swinging a weapon was something the pride of Dekaron, a tenth-circle archmage, would never permit. Had he been without the memories of his previous life, perhaps it would have been different.

The way into the Tower was simple. Think of entering, and a message appeared.

A nickname...

In his previous life it was a name that had been raised to godhood. Use it carelessly, and he would have been hauled away for blasphemy. In South Korea, it hardly mattered.

"Dekaron."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The moment he set the nickname, Woojin's body was teleported into the Tower.

The lobby floor was lined with shops, much like those kept by NPCs, and most of them sold equipment and consumables of every kind.

"Hey, new hunter? Come over here and have a look at some starter gear."

"It can get dangerous in there. How about buying potions first?"

NPCs and hunters mingled together, and the place had all the noise of a packed market. Brushing off the hawkers as he looked from one stall to the next, Woojin's eyes lit up. Tucked into the farthest corner, he had found a shop that sold magic skill books.

The equipment shops and the other skill book shops were crushed with people. The magic skill book shop, by contrast, was so deserted it might as well have been invisible, with nothing but flies drifting through it. The shopkeeper had been sitting there with a thoroughly lifeless look on his face. The moment Woojin drew near, he jolted upright.

"Ah—? C-customer, welcome! This is the magic skill book shop."

"Ah... yes, hello. I was hoping to purchase a Fireball skill book. Would that be possible?"

"Yes, yes! Of course!"

"How much is it?"

"Fireball is 100 gold!"

When he opened his inventory, he could see that 100 gold had been issued to him. He bought the skill book, then spoke again.

"Tell me, is business always this slow here?"

"Ah, yes... Mages simply aren't popular."

"Then couldn't you sell the skill books a little cheaper? People don't buy them because they're expensive."

"The prices are fixed rates set by the Tower. We can't change them on our own..."

The Tower sets the prices of the goods, too?

That was something else Woojin was learning for the first time.

"Ah, I see. Understood. Thank you."

"Yes! Please, you must come again, sir!!"

He had never heard a please come again sound quite so desperate. The shopkeeper was grinning from ear to ear over a hundred gold he clearly had not earned in a very long time.

Leaving the shop, Woojin used the skill book.

"Hm..."

Fireball had been the most basic of magics even in his previous life, and the very situation of having to learn it felt strange. From around the time Dekaron's childhood memories began, he had already been able to cast Fireball, a spell of the first circle. No one had ever taught him. He had simply been born with a genius so absolute that basic magic came to him by instinct.

The Mage Association back then must have been shocked enough for their eyes to pop clean out of their heads.

Woojin, sunk for a moment in the old memory, shook his head.

Enough of the past. Focus on the Tower.

And so Woojin, bare of any equipment and with nothing but the single Fireball he had just learned, entered Floor 1 of the Tower.

The monsters of Floor 1 were three goblins. Two carried swords, and one carried a bow.

Krek! The goblins that had spotted Woojin showed their hostility at once.

So few people climbed the Tower as mages that strategies written for them were exceedingly rare. Even so, he had fortunately been able to find one for Floor 1, at least. The mage-only guide Woojin had looked up in advance read as follows.

That was the strategy.

I spent days jogging at dawn because of this. You bastards.

The instant he entered, Woojin cast Fireball to carry out the first step. A sphere of flame formed above his palm.

Hm. A familiar feeling.

He sent the fireball flying at the bow goblin as naturally as breathing, and it struck true. Boom! The blast charred the bow goblin black and flung it sprawling, its croak cut short.

Now for step two of the guide. Run for his life.

Woojin broke into a run. A glance back showed the remaining two goblins pounding after him, furious and murderous. But as he fled them, a strange feeling came over him. It was too familiar—the sensation of Fireball taking shape, the arrangement of the mana, the feeling in the moment he let it fly. All of it matched, perfectly, his memories of casting Fireball in his previous life.

Don't tell me...

Still running, Woojin opened his hand and arranged his mana according to the formula for Fireball.

Fwoosh—! The thirty-second cooldown had plainly not yet passed, and still a Fireball formed above his hand.

"......!"

It was just as he had thought.

Then...

He altered the arrangement of the mana and laid technique over it. For a man who had been a tenth-circle archmage, improvising on a basic spell like this without clinging to the formula was child's play. He did not even need to use his own mana. He had already mastered the art of drawing on the mana that existed naturally in the air around the time he surpassed the eighth circle.

Fwoosh! In a heartbeat the fireball swelled to several times its size, and a fierce rush of dopamine tore through Woojin's body.

It works...! Then—what about this?

He revised the mana arrangement again in a flash. To change the structure of a spell that had already taken form was, by the common sense of any ordinary mage, impossible.

But who was he?

Fwoooosh! Not above Woojin's hand this time, but in the empty air all around him, enormous fireballs bloomed into being. At a glance there were dozens of them. In an instant the whole of the place was dyed red, as if a sun had risen inside the Tower.

Woojin stopped running. Slowly, he turned. The goblins that had been charging after him so fiercely stood with their mouths hanging open, jaws slack enough to come unhinged. Woojin let out a quiet laugh.

And he flicked his finger, lightly.