The First Game
My status had skyrocketed to VIP level at the Blue Magic Tower in an instant.
“Come this way, please, Mr. Reven.”
The newly awakened Master of the Magic Tower seemed to radiate more life energy than before, her skin glowing with vitality.
People really do need money.
“Hehe…! Haha…!”
“Heehee…! Ehehe…!”
A bunch of people kept laughing as if they couldn’t believe the reality in front of them.
“Brother.”
Rose-noona whispered to me with a serious face.
“If things go bad, I’ll break the outer wall of the Magic Tower. Jump down. I’ll buy us time, no matter how powerful the Master becomes.”
“Then… am I going to die…?”
“Huh…? That’s true. It’s okay. Noona will protect you.”
Suddenly, something about her words didn’t sit right with me…
—Creak…
—Hehehe…
Every time we passed through the Magic Tower, it felt like walking the corridors of a horror game. The screams and eerie laughter came from researchers who still had no idea about the investment.
In contrast, the Master of the Magic Tower looked absolutely cheerful.
I stepped into the guided research lab and heard the familiar sound once again.
Zzzzt…
It wasn’t the sound of the old magic lights flickering. This was lower, more regular, rhythmic.
Like the faint hum of an old electronic device that made you feel good in your ears.
“T-this is the magic-stone calculator. Ah, it’s still a prototype….”
The Master of the Magic Tower carefully lifted a large cloth. A bulky box-shaped device appeared underneath.
“This is… a calculator?”
“……”
“Why are you looking like that?”
Rose-noona examined me with a strange expression.
‘She’s disappointed?’
That was when she spoke.
“I want to live here.”
***
A day passed.
Rose had tried hard to stop me, but I remained glued to the research lab.
‘What exactly are you thinking…?’
Rose knew. She knew how insane the people living in the Magic Tower were.
They tried to perform human experiments at the slightest excuse, and their labs exploded from dangerous experiments as routine. Occasionally, they’d touch on taboos without thinking and get dragged before the ethics committee.
Reven really was smart. I had to admit that.
But in terms of combat ability, he was almost nonexistent.
The Master of the Magic Tower guaranteed my safety here, but I had no idea what would happen inside the tower.
‘If I don’t protect him…’
Beep.
Unlike last time, I now had an entry pass for the Magic Tower, so I could go in and out freely. I headed straight for the research lab where Reven was.
“I-If you do it like this… I-I’m afraid you’ll touch the wrong circuit over there and it’ll blow up. For real. It really blew up yesterday…”
The Master of the Magic Tower was explaining all sorts of things to Reven.
“Got it. Like this?”
“Y-Yeah. Y-You learn fast…”
Looking at it now, the situation was absurd. The Master of the Magic Tower was speaking in honorifics, and Reven was speaking casually.
“Reven, Noona’s here.”
Rose-noona had a bento bag slung over one arm.
Ever since becoming a member of the Blue Magic Tower, I’d never been able to live properly, so I thought I’d at least bring him food. And while I was at it, check if he was doing well.
“Whoa, food!”
Reven pulled out a sandwich from the bag and sat back down in front of the magic-stone calculator.
***
Two days passed.
When Rose-noona visited the research lab again, the atmosphere had changed completely from the day before.
Countless documents and wires were still tangled and messy, but the random stacks of paper had been neatly bundled into several piles.
Red ink markings had been drawn all over the wandering magic-stone circuits, and the magic-stone calculator now had more connections than the day before.
“So if you just input these values directly into the circuit, they’ll just shake.”
“Yes. The initial signal changes depending on the user’s mana amount…”
“Then maybe the user’s mana can just be used as the signal for pressing the buttons. The actual calculations will be handled by the internal magic stones.”
“T-Then we only use mana as the trigger… Ah, then…!”
Rose stared blankly at the scene.
‘Are they actually communicating?’
The Master of the Magic Tower was someone who could be called at the pinnacle of scholarship. Even researchers who entered under her would normally be given only simple tasks or errands.
After all, ordinary people couldn’t read the Master of the Magic Tower’s thoughts.
No matter how much they graduated from the academy on the elite track and pushed through their doctoral programs, they always judged everything from a completely different level and reached conclusions that were entirely alien to others.
Yet here they were, sitting face to face over the same problem.
***
Three days passed.
When Rose-noona entered the research lab, a bizarre scene unfolded.
“Hey, you can’t leave the circuit over there like that. The input values will shake.”
“But according to the existing mana circuit theory…”
“It’s not that the existing theory is wrong—it’s that the purpose is different. This isn’t a calculator; it has to be seen as a device that responds.”
“A responding device…”
The Master of the Magic Tower murmured blankly and immediately started writing something on paper.
“H-How did you even think of that…!”
Rose blinked in surprise.
At first, the Master of the Magic Tower had been explaining things to Reven.
But now it was the opposite.
Reven was explaining, and the Master of the Magic Tower was writing it down and gaining enlightenment.
That same Master of the Magic Tower… the one I knew?
She looked like a young disciple nodding to her professor.
The Master of the Magic Tower was holding the report with both hands, eyes sparkling, when she noticed Rose-noona had arrived.
“Ah! M-Miss Rose! Mr. Reven is a genius who appears once in a hundred years! No, once in a thousand!”
“R-Really…?”
“Yes! He’s looking at our academic structure completely differently! We were only thinking of it as a calculator, but Mr. Reven said it’s a box that holds commands!”
“A box that holds commands…?”
“Yes! And just now he suggested a way to display location information on the output panel, not just simple numbers. Then numbers could become moving points, and when the points move…”
“Ah… Yeah…”
I didn’t understand a word he was saying.
“Nom nom… Delicious.”
Somehow, Reven had started eating the meat pie Rose-noona had made.
“H-How… is it coming along?”
“A little? It’s still in the early stages.”
“E-Early stage…? What is this…?”
The Master of the Magic Tower’s expression was one of pure shock.
Rose-noona gave up on thinking.
***
One week passed.
“Mr. Reven, how is the research going? Hehe.”
Who’s that?
Rose-noona froze the moment she stepped over the threshold of the research lab.
Iria Bellein, the Master of the Blue Magic Tower.
Just a week ago, she had been a disheveled-haired researcher with dark circles under her eyes, looking like she’d collapse at any moment.
But now it was different.
Neatly combed silver hair.
The round glasses had completely disappeared.
Cheeks with healthy color, and eyes full of vitality instead of fatigue.
Objectively, she was beautiful.
I’d only recognized her by voice, but just looking at her face, I never would have imagined it was the same person.
Most of all, there was no creepy laugh this time. It was a warm smile that seemed to cherish something…
The Master of the Magic Tower finally noticed Rose-noona and approached.
“Ah, Miss Rose. Hello. Thank you for always taking care of Mr. Reven.”
She was a cute girl with sparkling eyes.
“Iria. Come look at this.”
“Yes, what is it?”
She even called me by name and sat down.
I still couldn’t understand the situation.
“T-That’s… Master?”
“Yes?”
“Have you two been getting close lately without me realizing it?”
The Master of the Magic Tower blinked once. Then she smiled brightly.
“Yes. Mr. Reven is the first person to understand my research. And he’s also the one who explores the truth that I, who am so lowly, could never reach.”
What are you saying?
“Uh, Noona. Come look at this.”
Somehow, the magic-stone calculator had shrunk a lot compared to before.
At first glance, it looked like an old warehouse hunk of junk, but now it was small enough to sit on the desk. The connecting wires and tangled magic-stone circuits on the sides remained the same, though.
Reven was writing something colorful on the black screen through the input panel.
Tadak. Tada tadak.
“M-Magic? Weren’t you unable to use that before?”
It looked a bit like some kind of calligraphy magic. White letters appeared in the empty black space.
“Commands. It’s called C.”
The Master of the Magic Tower simply watched the situation with a delighted expression.
Reven pressed the input panel one last time. The letters disappeared, the screen turned off, then turned back on.
Blocks appeared.
Sometimes L-shaped blocks, sometimes long straight blocks, and sometimes square blocks.
Then they dropped down.
Slowly.
Sometimes quickly.
“What is this…?”
Rose asked blankly.
Reven smiled.
It was the exact same expression he’d had when he first saw chess.
“What else? It’s a game.”
The world’s first computer game.
“Tetras.”