Chapter 179: The Tin Knight and the Tower of Foresight (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 179: The Tin Knight and the Tower of Foresight (6)
The Magic Tower is a closed society.
The Magic Tower is an open society.
Though they seem contradictory at first glance, both statements were true.
A group is a collection of many people, and just because they belong to the same group doesn’t mean all its members share the same disposition.
Within the Magic Tower, there were those who ignored the outside world, dedicating themselves solely to the pursuit of magic and truth. There were also those who sought to actively unleash their accumulated magical power upon the world.
The former remained in the tower; the latter stormed out to build new ones.
The Tower of Foresight, belonging to the former category, was therefore the most reclusive of them all.
But this created a problem.
The Tower of Foresight valued tradition and rules.
And among their traditions were rules established before the towers had split.
Rules that had been co-authored by mages who were full of vigor, eager to engage with the outside world and actively interact with people.
For the mages of the Tower of Foresight, this was a major headache.
Some argued that since the tower had been reborn, the old rules should be abolished. Others countered that arbitrarily changing rules for convenience would make them no different from the others they disdained.
As was typical of a tower populated solely by the stubborn and obstinate, the debate did not end easily.
Some rules and traditions were revised or discarded to fit the times, but others remained.
The ‘Rule of Hospitality’ was one such tradition that had not disappeared.
It dated back to a time when the Magic Tower was rapidly expanding its scale and accepting mages from all walks of life.
“Is there any need to reveal our knowledge and achievements to those who are not our own? I believe we should only accept those who vow to join the tower.”
“If we are so selective, no one will want to join us. That would be akin to turning away the vast wisdom and knowledge that could come our way. The Magic Tower must not be so!”
The Witch of the North, one of the tower’s founders, had insisted that they must not bare their fangs at mages who were not part of the tower. This argument helped the Magic Tower, which might have otherwise remained a small club, to flourish.
In a way, it was a tradition that formed the very roots of the Magic Tower, a rule that even the most fastidious mages could not carelessly abolish.
Unable to voice their complaints openly, the mages of the Tower of Foresight responded by concealing the rule’s very existence.
After all, if no one came to visit, there would be no one to extend hospitality to.
That had been the case until this very moment.
Murmur, murmur. Whisper, whisper.
Ignoring the questioning gazes and murmurs around them, Dorothea’s party strode confidently through the center of the Magic Tower.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ remarks that this finally feels like a land of magic!]
To be honest, the scenery of the Magic State the party had seen so far had been disappointing in many ways.
Aside from some differences in attire and architectural styles, it hadn’t been all that different from the cities they had seen before.
But the inside of the Magic Tower was different.
Mages dressed in the tower’s unique garb, golems following them like servants, spirits hovering in the air, doors that opened and closed on their own, and moving staircases. Bizarre characters were inscribed on the walls and floors.
It was a dizzying sight, yet it did not seem chaotic.
The sheer weight of the place itself acted as a central axis, grounding everything with a solemn presence.
“Woah.”
“Hoh.”
Adelaide’s eyes sparkled as if she were experiencing a scene from a story she had always admired.
Sophia’s gaze darted about, as if trying to commit the building’s overall form and its every decoration to memory.
The Tin Knight watched with interest the bird-shaped spirits breathing fire in the air and the golems, while only Dorothea walked forward with a placid expression.
Most of the mages merely watched Dorothea’s party and Poi—who was moving like a stiff wooden doll, having been unwillingly cast as their guide—from a distance. But some stood to block their path.
“Wait, Poi. Who are these people? They don’t look like applicants, so why are they inside the tower?”
A female mage with gaunt cheeks and sharp eyes shot a glare at Poi, her face somewhat angered.
The emblem on her chest was engraved with three books.
Poi answered, terrified.
“Th-they’re here for a tour! I let them in according to the reception protocol!”
“A tour? What nonsense is that?”
“No, I mean, it’s that thing we have to memorize before starting our reception duties. Here.”
When Poi quickly held out a small notebook, the female mage checked its contents and scowled.
But soon, as if remembering something, a look of composure returned to her face.
Dorothea addressed the female mage blocking her path.
“Is there something you want to say?”
“Where did you hear about that rule? No, I don’t even need to ask. Judging by the way you shamelessly parade around in that vulgar outfit, you must have seduced some man to get this far.”
It was a venomous insult.
Dorothea, however, remained unfazed.
“If you’re done talking, would you mind moving? I’m a bit busy following that thing.”
Dorothea pointed to the silver horse, whose reins were held by the Tin Knight, as it kept trying to move forward. She had prepared the reins because letting the horse wander freely inside the tower, unlike outside, could cause all sorts of problems.
The female mage’s expression twisted for a moment, but she quickly recovered her smile of composure and spoke.
“You seem to be acting cocky because you’re relying on that rule, but a ‘guest’ of the Magic Tower is, first and foremost, a mage. And a mage capable of bringing new knowledge and wisdom to the tower at that—”
“You talk too much.”
“What?”
Dorothea cut the female mage off, then took out a small glass bottle and uncorked it.
The black liquid that flowed from within didn’t fall to the floor but instead rose into the air, drawing a complex pattern.
“That’s…!”
“Is that air-control magic?”
“That’s not the method of the Wizard school. It’s closer to the Alchemists.”
The onlookers were initially puzzled, but as befitting a tower teeming with skilled mages, they quickly recognized the value of the spell Dorothea had demonstrated, their eyes glinting with interest.
“A guest has to bring knowledge and wisdom? Fine, I’ll give you some. As for whether I have that ability, the ones who’ve visited my shop know better than anyone.”
Leaving the stunned female mage behind, Dorothea declared:
“But it won’t be free. For every hundred steps I take, I will offer one piece of knowledge that will interest you. That is, if you don’t block my path like this again.”
The Tower of Foresight. One of the four pillars supporting the Magic State.
Before these people, who even high-ranking nobles couldn’t easily challenge, the black-haired witch threw down the gauntlet without a hint of intimidation.
“You claim a mage is one who seeks wisdom and knowledge, right? Instead of this pathetic power struggle, let’s compete with that so-called ‘duty of a mage.’”
The Magic Tower heated up.
*
Turning back the clock a little, to the time when mages were visiting Dorothea to restore various lost materials instead of divining their own pasts.
“Hide the information?”
“Yes. If what we find out is 100, then telling them about 30 to 50 is enough. The rest, especially information not directly related to what the client brought, we should keep for ourselves.”
The past shown by the Chalice of Tuberose was rather arbitrary. Sometimes, only a small fragment was barely discernible, while at other times, it came with a bonus of information she hadn't even been curious about.
For example, when she looked into the past of a parchment inscribed with a specific spell, an image of another parchment being crafted on the same desk would appear alongside it.
Of course, it was an ability with little practical use.
Not only was it not a record she could view actively, but such ‘bonuses’ often flashed by before she could properly read their contents.
Sophia, however, was an exception.
She could remember almost perfectly anything she managed to perceive even once, and she was exceptionally skilled at transcribing the words or symbols onto paper.
The Tin Knight had even called her a human scanner.
“But there was a ton of stuff in there that even I couldn’t decipher.”
“We don’t need to decipher it. If we just throw them the original, they’ll happily start analyzing it. In fact, they’ll be even more fired up than if we gave them a translated version.”
*
Returning to the present, Dorothea thought to herself.
‘They really are fired up.’
“What is it this time? A picture?”
“No, it’s text. It looks like it’s from the City-State Alliance era…”
“A dictionary, someone bring me a dictionary.”
Every time Dorothea and her party walked, a swarm of mages followed, moving as a group.
No one was shouting or running, but the fact that they were doing so with such composed expressions and tones made it look all the more bizarre.
It was a good thing the tower was so massive. If they had tried something similar in an ordinary tower, the corridors would have been so packed with people that moving would have been impossible.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says it feels like being the Pied Piper!]
In truth, not much of the information Dorothea offered was overwhelmingly powerful or practical on its own.
Mixed in was something like an ancient complaint letter, which Sophia had glanced at and said, “This is written in what was considered an ancient script even in my time, but the content is just someone complaining to a swindler.”
But the mages didn’t seem to mind even that.
Even if the content itself wasn’t directly related to magic, by analyzing the text and understanding the characters, they could use that knowledge to interpret other magical texts.
“Ah…”
Each time they ascended to the next floor via a staircase made of floating stones, a few mages would stop, their faces filled with regret.
It seemed that even mages of the tower couldn't freely access every space.
Seeing outsiders like Dorothea’s party pass through such places freely, murmurs began to spread.
“But is it right to allow a ‘tour’ this far up? From this level onward, only 3rd rank mages and above are allowed, aren’t they?”
“We’d have to check the old casebooks.”
“Casebooks? What’s the point of bringing up cases from when the tower was only five stories tall?”
The mages looked perplexed.
They seemed to feel that something was wrong with the situation, but they hesitated, lacking a clear rule to stop Dorothea’s party.
The only reason the backlash wasn’t stronger was that the party was simply following the silver horse instead of snooping around.
‘If we had been poking our noses into every room, they would have been much more guarded. But why is this tower designed with stairs scattered all over the place? The layout is so inefficient.’
Dorothea’s own thoughts weren’t entirely at ease.
Although she was bulking up the volume by mixing in less important documents, the materials she had hastily prepared over a few days were not inexhaustible.
She had calculated that dropping one piece of information every hundred steps would be enough to keep the mages distracted, but seeing the silver horse show no sign of stopping even after passing the 7th floor, she began to think she should have adjusted the pace to one hundred and fifty steps, even if it seemed a bit cheap.
Dorothea steeled herself, prepared to reveal a few of her own spells in the worst-case scenario, but fortunately, it didn’t come to that.
The 9th floor of the Magic Tower.
On a level where only 4th rank mages and above—the core members of the tower’s faculty—remained, the silver horse finally turned toward a different direction instead of the stairs leading to the next floor.
A massive door, at least twice Dorothea’s height.
Seeing the silver horse pacing before it, unable to enter, Dorothea asked.
“Where is this?”
“Huh? Uh, wh-what?”
Poi, the apprentice mage acting as their guide, couldn’t answer properly.
Then again, he was a guide in name only, having just been swept along by the atmosphere, following the silver horse with Dorothea’s party. It was no surprise he couldn’t answer the question.
Poi had been secretly hoping that one of the senior mages or professors would tell him, “You can’t go any further, so we’ll have to send someone else in your place,” but the mages, their eyes glued to Dorothea’s performance, paid no attention to the inconspicuous apprentice.
Deciding he was useless, Dorothea turned her gaze behind her.
And she frowned.
A man with long black hair.
It wasn’t because Medir Geldnir was there—it was hardly strange for the head of the Tower of Foresight to be in his own tower.
The problem was that the golden-haired girl, Rapunzel, whom she had left outside to avoid getting her too involved in this matter, was with him.
Noticing Dorothea’s expression harden, Medir spoke.
“Don’t misunderstand. She is not a hostage. I simply thought it would be good to let her tour the inside of the tower. An opportunity like this is quite rare.”
“I-I’m fine.”
As Rapunzel nodded repeatedly to assure her she was safe, Dorothea turned back with an indifferent expression and asked.
“So, where is this?”
The mages, who had been startled by the Tower Head’s silent appearance among them, were now even more shocked to see the girl in the fortune-teller’s outfit speak so informally to him.
Of course, Dorothea, who was nothing if not thick-skinned, paid them no mind.
Medir said, “You’ll know when you go inside.”
“……”
It was a thoroughly suspicious answer.
Though she felt a bit uneasy, Dorothea, conscious of the Tin Knight right beside her, reached out her hand without hesitation.
The door opened.