Chapter 32

Chapter 32. Tower - Convoy Escort (1)

What do you mean, a thousand years is only?

What is he, a dragon from a fantasy story? An elf?

Still, the middle-aged man before me seemed like he had gone mad in a relatively gentle way.

At least he was not smearing shit on the walls or suddenly attacking me.

After taking a deep breath, the middle-aged man spoke in a calm voice.

“With your talent, you likely do not need to go out of your way to visit the Mage Tower branches in the 20th-floor-range zone or the 30th-floor-range zone. However, they will know magic of their own, so visiting them would not be a bad idea. But be careful. I do not know what city you will go to, but mages with enough self-discipline to suppress their jealousy like me are rare.”

“...Even if they know the Tower’s enforcers will come and drag them away for it?”

“Are there no fools who commit murder on impulse despite knowing they will be arrested if they kill?”

That was an obvious answer to a foolish question.

Fuck, was I in danger just now?

“Do not look at me like that. If a mage does not envy talent recognized by him, then that mage has failed as a mage. However, he must have known my self-discipline as well, which is why he sent you here.”

I did not know who the old librarian was, but this man seemed to be wearing rose-colored glasses so thick they had fused to his eyes.

“Uh... yes. Thank you.”

Even as I thanked him, I wondered whether it was right to thank him for not committing a crime against me.

Not committing crimes is common sense.

Criminals are the ones who are abnormal and not fit to be called human beings.

So let’s say I was thankful for learning magic and receiving the spellbooks.

He had given me precious knowledge as repayment just for seeing Magic Bullet, hadn’t he?

I sent the spellbooks straight to the Tower’s first floor, where my main body was, through Inventory, then immediately left the Mage Tower branch.

“Fuck, I’m never setting foot around here again. That was scary as hell.”

It was common sense to avoid mad dogs with qi deviation.

I never thought I would live long enough to witness someone falling into qi deviation with my own eyes, something I had only heard about in stories on the Galactic Murim internet.

It was my first time learning that qi deviation could occur even when one learned magic instead of martial arts.

---

After returning to the inn, I read through the spellbooks once, and to summarize them simply, their contents were an extension of the basic magic the middle-aged man at the Mage Tower branch had shown me.

Creating fire and shaping it into blades, arrows, walls, and so on to swing, shoot, or block.

They described how to shape and move each of those based on the elements.

Other than that, they described methods to create elements simultaneously and methods to fuse them.

For example, creating water and releasing heat to make ice, or absorbing heat to create fog.

The movement of mana for this was expressed through complex function equations, and when I drew graphs on paper to check, it was certainly intuitive.

I had wondered why magic was expressed through mathematical equations, but there was nothing like a graph for expressing the movement of mana.

But if these are such basic graphs, couldn’t they just express them as drawings?

Ah, is it because diagrams take up too much space?

But why are there incantations?

I don’t know. No matter how I looked at it, self-study seemed to have limits.

It would be convenient if I had a teacher, but after visiting the Mage Tower branch, I was reluctant to form connections with the Tower’s mages.

“When I reach the 20th floor, Slot 3 will appear, right? Then let’s send Slot 3 to a magic world.”

Reincarnation took too much time, so let’s make Slot 3 as a normal clone.

I could decide whether to reincarnate or not after seeing the world’s situation.

After all, when Multidimensional Avatar reached Level 20, a new ability might appear, like Reincarnation and Third-Person Avatar had, so I would need to try using that ability too.

“Guess I’ll sleep now.”

The sun had completely set, and it was dark outside the window. I lay on the bed and went to sleep.

---

I woke up early in the morning, performed breathing circulation, and went outside the city.

Since I had agreed to meet Lee Soo-young around 10 a.m. and go up to the 12th floor, I decided to test magic outside the city.

If I entered the forest, Goblins would appear, but practicing on Goblins in a forest with many obstacles seemed difficult, so I decided to test magic against Horned Rabbits and Blade Fighting Roosters hiding in the grass of the plains.

Fire magic seemed dangerous in case it caused a fire, so I tried using Wind Pressure Bullets and Water Orb Bullets with wind and water magic.

“Whoa, it takes more mana than I expected to get any power.”

Hitting itself was easier than I had expected.

After selecting a target, if I created a thread-like path with mana and fired, the shot bent slightly in the air and struck like a guided missile.

However, making it a guided missile consumed two or three times more mana than firing it in a straight line.

That said, if I fired it normally, it did not hit where I aimed very well, so there was no helping it.

After catching around thirty Horned Rabbits and Blade Fighting Roosters that way, harvesting their magic stones, and selling them to the butcher, I returned to the inn room and filled my qi center with internal energy through breathing circulation.

After that, it was already close to 10, so I hurried to the meeting place.

“You’re late. Did you oversleep?”

“No, I went outside the city for a bit to practice.”

“Practice?”

At Lee Soo-young’s question, I created a small flame at the tip of my finger.

“Magic?! Did you get magic through that...?”

Lee Soo-young read the room and mouthed “ability stone” without saying it aloud.

I had thought this before, but she had pretty good sense.

“No. I found out there was a Mage Tower branch in this city, so I learned the basics of magic there.”

“What? There was a place like that?! C-Could I learn too?”

At her expression, full of pure curiosity and anticipation, I shook my head with a stiff expression.

“I’d rather teach you myself. I don’t think you should go there.”

“Huh? Why?”

“The owner there is a little insane. I’m never going back.”

At my firm words, Lee Soo-young seemed to grow even more curious about the Mage Tower branch.

“I’m not joking. While using magic, he told me I should be grateful he didn’t kill me because his mental self-discipline was deep.”

The order of events was slightly off, but it was not a lie.

Seeing how he had felt jealousy and undergone qi deviation over a sprout who had only just met him, and whose only usable magic was a Level 1 Magic Bullet, far too green to even call a newbie, it was hard to believe he had deep mental self-discipline in the first place.

“Ah, then I won’t go either.”

“Good choice. If you don’t trust what I teach you, then just learn at the Mage Tower branch on the 20th floor or in another city. Just not here.”

The Mage Tower branch on the 10th floor was not known, but according to information from the Tower Community, from the 20th floor onward, the Mage Tower branches seemed to be quite large.

If I went there, I absolutely should not mention that I met the old librarian.

“Ah, after trying to use magic, I realized firing guided shots like Mulpung is not easy. I can definitely understand why it can’t shoot multiple shots at once.”

“Huh? The Water Orb Bullets Mulpung fires aren’t guided missiles, though.”

“What?! They aren’t guided missiles, but they hit like that?”

At my words, Lee Soo-young spoke as if it were obvious.

“I did archery, remember? I’m the one doing all the targeting and firing. Did you think they were guided missiles this whole time?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Hahaha! There’s no way. Oppa, you hit things pretty well with every hand axe you throw too, and you’re still overreacting.”

No, I had never once hit the spot I was aiming for.

All of those were just landing by luck. ...But saying that would hurt my pride, so I simply nodded.

“R-Right.”

From now on, even if it costs more mana, I should just fire them as guided missiles.

No, I should just use my sword. Since when have I been using magic?

Lee Soo-young and I placed our hands on the crystal and went up.

---

The 12th-floor quest was easy.

It was a request from a farmer asking us to drive away flying beasts trying to steal grain from his paddy.

The problem was that the flying beasts were the size of eagles.

They even had blades on their legs, like Blade Fighting Roosters.

I attacked with Magic Bullet, which consumed little mana, while Lee Soo-young attacked with her bow and Mulpung’s Water Orb Bullets. But by the time we knocked down a few flying in the sky, dozens had already landed on the ground, pecked away eagerly at the grain, and fled back into the sky.

Once they ran away like that, they performed random evasive maneuvers high in the sky and dodged arrows and Water Orb Bullets, making them extremely difficult to catch properly.

After firing magic a few times, I got pissed off, bought a net through the reincarnation clone, received it through Inventory, and the moment they landed on the ground to peck at the grain, I threw the net and caught them all at once.

No matter how much they tried to tear the net with the blades attached to their legs, the synthetic fiber, a product of 50th-century space engineering, was tough. Very tough.

The flying beasts trapped in the net became food for my sword.

After doing that a few times, the quest was completed in an hour.

“Would you be willing to sell that net to me? I will buy it for 2,000 Credits. No! 3,000 Credits!”

The farmer pleaded earnestly, looking at my net like it was a precious treasure.

It was not that the farmer had not used nets because he did not know how.

No matter how many times he used nets, they were useless because they were torn apart by the blades attached to those legs.

So of course he would covet a net that did not immediately tear even against those blades.

I impulsively sold him the net for 3,000 Credits.

I bought it for 20,000 nyang, about 20,000 won, so selling it for 3,000 Credits, about 300,000 won, was good for me.

Given the farmer’s desperation, I probably could have sold it for three times that price, but I did not want to profit excessively from someone else’s misfortune.

Instead, I sold him five more spare nets.

The farmer was happy because he could buy more nets, and I was happy because I unexpectedly gained a nice bit of income.

“Oppa, is your Inventory different from mine? Why do you have so many nets?”

“Hahaha, that looks different from how light it really is. Now, since we finished early, let’s go straight to the next floor.”

I urged her to go to the next floor.

The 13th floor was not that difficult either.

On the 13th floor, no one had wished to the Tower, but the quest was to wipe out a Goblin den that had multiplied abnormally.

Finding the Goblin den in the forest was not difficult.

If we followed the Goblins wandering through the forest, they returned to their den.

The Goblin den looked like a naturally formed cave.

Lee Soo-young worried about fighting in a dark environment, but I thought the opposite.

If entering the enemy den was dangerous, then we simply did not need to enter, did we?

I followed the Goblins from behind, then went to a bamboo grove I had discovered, cut down bamboo, and made a simple barricade with rope.

“Where did you learn to make something like this?”

“The army.”

In the army, we sometimes made simple barricades with spikes for controlling vehicle entry.

Usually, things like this were made by welding rebar and steel pipes, or rebar and iron plates, but when you have no teeth, you make do with gums.

I roughly substituted rope and sharpened bamboo.

Naturally, I had also learned how to tie things so they would not come loose in the army.

Back when I learned it, I did not even feel like I was learning. I only thought the administration sergeant had dumped hard labor on me. But as expected, a person should learn whatever they can.

To think it would be useful like this.

Of course, that did not mean I wanted to go to the army again.

That place is unfit for humans to live in.

Before blocking the cave entrance with the barricade, Lee Soo-young and I dealt with the Goblins wandering outside the den.

Then we immediately blocked the cave entrance with the barricade.

I fixed the barricade in place by burying the lower part of it deep with earth magic.

After blocking the entrance, I obtained extermination smoke grenades for space cockroaches that could reproduce even inside spaceships, lit them, strengthened my arm with internal energy, and threw them deep into the cave.

The smoke grenade burst and emitted thick toxic smoke.

I kept throwing in cockroach-extermination smoke grenades, the kind that would send even a human to the hospital if they breathed them for too long.

After throwing in around ten, acrid, thick smoke began pouring out from the cave entrance as well, and with Goblins screaming in panic, the sound of them rushing toward the entrance reached us.

Instead of her bow, Lee Soo-young held a bamboo spear I had made and stabbed the Goblins trying to rush out.

I also worked hard killing Goblins with a bamboo spear and moved the Goblin corpses aside.

“Oppa, isn’t the superpower you received not martial arts, but some kind of special shop? Between the combat uniform and the nets, weird things keep popping out.”

“Keep stabbing if you’ve got time to talk! They’re still coming out!”

Sharp girl.

No, was I the one being a little careless?

Still, there was nothing I could do. I could not endure inconvenience just to avoid making my party member suspicious.

If Lee Soo-young wanted to keep partying with me, she would just assume I had some secret and move on appropriately.

After stabbing for a long time like that, lunchtime arrived.

I took out sandwiches I had bought on the 10th floor and asked,

“It’s still early. Want to go up?”

Lee Soo-young bit into the sandwich I gave her with a “Yum!” and nodded.

“After we rest a bit.”

“Good idea.”

We had annihilated two hundred Goblins and twelve Hobgoblins.