Chapter 176: The Tin Knight and the Tower of Foresight (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 176: The Tin Knight and the Tower of Foresight (3)
“……”
Licht remained silent.
As a skilled mage from the Tower of Foresight, he was having a battle of wills with this suspicious fortune-teller… or not. He was simply captivated by the black-clad woman's beauty.
For a man who was practically a graduate student, having spent most of his life buried in books and experimental equipment, the stark contrast of her white skin and black veil was lethally alluring.
As the continued silence caused the woman in black's fine eyes to narrow, the green-haired servant beside her let out a quiet chuckle.
“Hehe, it seems you're at a loss for words. Here, why don't you have a cup of tea first?”
“Ah, um, th-thank you. The taste of the tea… no, the aroma is quite nice.”
Only after the teacup was placed before him did Licht realize the disgraceful state he'd been in and hastily tried to compose his expression.
Judging by how he tried to comment on the taste without even drinking it before belatedly changing his words, it wasn't very effective.
The usual Licht would never have touched a mysterious beverage from an unknown shop, but right now, he didn't have the mental capacity to think that far.
The woman in black spoke to Licht, who was gulping down the tea he couldn't even taste as if it were water.
“I'll ask again. What are you curious about?”
A mage from the Tower was equivalent to a noble in other countries. And yet, the woman spoke to him informally without a second thought.
What was even stranger was that it seemed so natural, it somehow didn't feel unpleasant to be on the receiving end.
Licht let out a dry cough and then spoke.
“I heard you can see the past. Is that true?”
“What a pointless question.”
“What?”
“If I say it's true, will you believe everything else I say? If I say it's a lie, will you leave, satisfied that it was a lie after all? I doubt it.”
“……”
“Judge for yourself what is right and wrong, Licht Glaubig. Isn't that the ideology championed by the Tower of Foresight?”
This time, Licht's eyes widened.
He hadn't breathed a single word about his identity.
Ordinarily, one would assume she had done a background check on him, but the flow of events so far made Licht consider another possibility.
Could it be? Is she for real? Can she really know the past?
“What a waste of time.”
The woman lowered her eyes, her expression languid with boredom.
“Fine. If the question is too difficult, I'll just start on my own.”
From between her half-closed eyelids, a red radiance overflowed.
“—You're looking for your lost parents. You told your adoptive parents you didn't care, but deep down, you've always held it in your heart. But the only clue you have is a faint memory, and even that memory fades with each passing day. That's why you delved into magic that could obtain information.”
Licht let out an involuntary gasp.
He asked in a fluster.
“D-don't tell me you know where they are right now!?”
“Magic isn't omnipotent. The fragments you can grasp are just that—pieces. You should know that.”
“Even the smallest clue is enough.”
The woman in black stared at him intently.
Seeing her peculiar, unreadable gaze, Licht swallowed nervously without realizing it.
“Alright, then close your eyes. You are not to open them until I say it's okay.”
Already completely overwhelmed by the atmosphere, Licht closed his eyes as instructed.
And in the next moment, an immense pressure washed over him.
Gasp!
For a mage, the ability to sense and manipulate the surrounding mana was a fundamental skill.
But now, Licht couldn't feel anything around him.
With his sight blocked and now unable to even sense mana, an extreme anxiety enveloped him.
Then, the woman's words reached his ears.
“…Go to your adoptive parents' house. Second floor, the study. Between the books on the top right of the bookshelf, you'll find what you want to know. You can open your eyes now.”
“Now, the way out is this way.”
Even as the green-haired servant guided him, Licht couldn't shake the feeling of being bewitched.
And, exactly half a day later.
Having discovered the investigation records on his birth parents' whereabouts in his late adoptive father's study, Licht let out a sigh of astonishment.
“It's real. It was real…!”
*
“Thanks to the fortune-teller, I found my lost brooch! It was a gift to commemorate entering the Tower, so it was really precious to me!”
“Thanks to her, I was able to reconcile with my friend. It turns out a few of the letters we sent each other had gone missing, causing a misunderstanding to build up.”
“Me? Nothing much. She said I don't have any karma right now that requires looking into the past.”
“The password! I finally found the password I've been struggling with for ten years!!”
“Catherine was secretly seeing another man behind my back? And for a long time, too? No, no!! I didn't want to know this!”
“It's not a scam! That thing is real!”
The story of the fortune-teller who had set up shop in front of the Tower of Foresight spread faster with each passing day.
Even the mages who had initially been indifferent couldn't help but become interested when their colleagues from the Tower chattered about her whenever they gathered.
It got to the point where the mages from the Tower kept getting a free pass to the front of the line, forcing the two girls acting as guides to create separate queues for mages and commoners.
Of course, as is always the case with such things, negative opinions followed.
“Everyone, calm down! What is this disgraceful behavior from members of our historic Tower!”
“The information that fortune-teller provides seems overly biased. It's not normal to go in wanting to hear about A, only for them to chatter on about a completely different B, is it?”
“To be honest, I find it a bit creepy. Doesn't it mean my entire past can be seen through just by looking at me? Quite a few mages in the Tower know classified information. If that kind of information gets out, how will we handle the consequences?”
The commotion became a controversy, the controversy led to a debate, and the debate ignited into a fiery battle of words.
It was a testament to the Tower's dignity that they at least fought only with words, without resorting to fists or pointing fingers.
“You idiots! It's obviously just a sales tactic! A scam! I'm utterly ashamed to be part of the same Tower as so many people who fall for such nonsense!”
“What did you just say? Hey, you bastard! A problem has been presented with clear proof right before your eyes, and you deny it without even thinking of properly examining it? And you call yourself a scholar!?”
“That fortune-teller's ability is far too dangerous! We must apprehend them immediately to protect the Tower's secrets!”
“What kind of nonsense is that? I mean, to put it bluntly, did they kidnap our mages or something? You went to get your fortune told out of your own curiosity, and now you want to kidnap them because they're 'dangerous'? Have you ever heard of anything so outrageous?!”
“This is a conspiracy! Another Tower has hatched a grand conspiracy to divide our Tower of Foresight!”
“Shouldn't we first try to figure out their identities and purpose before anything else? It's not like people just drop out of the sky for no reason to tell fortunes there, right?”
Then one day, a bombshell dropped that would silence all their debates in an instant.
“Hey, Valem. Why the long face? Did the fortune-telling not go well? I told you not to get your hopes up too high. They may be quite skilled, but the effects vary from person to person, so don't be too disappointed…”
“…It's been restored.”
“What?”
“The magic book that was unusable because half its contents had weathered away. She told me all of it! Oh, heavens! To grant me such fortune!!”
She could see the past of objects, not just people!
And what's more, the past of objects was even more accurate than that of people!
The Tower of Foresight.
Its main duty was to collect, organize, and restore all sorts of magic that existed throughout history.
However, in the long history of magic, the period in which it began to be systematized and specialized like it is today was not very long, and in the first place, mages were not the type to share their magic so easily.
While sufficient data had been accumulated for magic created after the Tower's founding, it was rare for magic from the eras before that to be passed down intact.
If a good number of fragments remained, one could at least infer the missing parts from the existing content. But for magic with more missing parts than remaining ones, the possibility of restoration was slim, and they were simply piled up in a warehouse with the vague hope that 'maybe we can recover it someday.'
But now they could confirm even a part of that content?
And it wasn't just for written records—they could find out how an unidentified magic tool was used in the past, or even obtain information about its creation process?
Like PC users whose eyes glaze over at the news of an internet archive and a broken hard drive restoration service, the mages of the Tower went wild.