Chapter 54

Chapter : 54

Leaving Ingrid with an uncomfortable matter still unresolved with Agares bothered me inwardly.

Judging by the fact that he had yielded to me, he did not seem to view me with displeasure, but there must have been some lingering resentment.

If possible, I wanted to resolve it before the Academy began its next semester, but realistically, that would be difficult.

Even as I left his territory, I kept wearing the cloak he had given me.

Partly because the cloak itself was of excellent quality, but also because it was quite useful.

In an age when connections were more important than ever, a cloak given by Agares was proof that I had a relationship with the Grand Duke of the North, so it was a rather excellent weapon.

I debated whether to return to the Isaac territory or go to Ian’s Magic Tower, then headed for the Magic Tower.

Magic interested me more than swordplay. That thought had only grown stronger after helping Agares and fighting monsters.

To catch monsters with a sword, I needed at least a minimum distance.

If I stretched my arm fully and took one step, my sword had to reach the monster, so even generously, that was four meters. I had to keep the distance between the enemy and me within four meters.

Was that not too short?

No matter how weak a monster was, it looked vicious from the start.

When it growled and bared its fangs, if our eyes so much as met, I was liable to flinch in surprise.

By contrast, how comfortable was magic?

All I had to do was keep several dozen meters of distance and fire from far away. The sense of security made me hum in admiration again and again.

If possible, I wanted to live the rest of my life without fighting anything, but one never knew what might happen.

In preparation for the worst, I had to build up my martial power.

Create a huge distance between myself and the opponent, escape danger, and attack one-sidedly.

The only thing that made that possible was magic.

For that reason, I headed to the Magic Tower where Ian was. An opportunity like this would not come twice.

---

My sister liked magic.

No matter what game she played, she always played a mage, and she had a belief or value system of her own. Swinging a sword or shooting a bow could be clumsily imitated in reality, but the best one could do for magic was go out to the countryside and play with fire.

Even that, she grumbled, felt more like a Magic Swordsman than a mage.

Thanks to that, Ian had received many benefits.

He was always near the top in ranking contests among the male leads, and in many ways, he had taken plenty of good episodes for himself.

More than anything, in this world, magic was omnipotent.

Swinging a sword, drawing out Sword Aura, and creating Sword Force could at best break something or kill something.

As one’s level in swordsmanship rose, all that changed was that one broke things better and killed things better.

Magic, by contrast, enriched life.

Electric lamps that shone several times brighter than candlelight were one example, and so was hot water that poured out even in winter.

Even the mansions of the wealthy had dozens of spells installed, and they said the Magic Tower had easily hundreds.

Before entering the Magic Tower, I looked around the building.

Its design emphasized efficiency, like a modern high-rise apartment, but a round Artifact decorated the spire at the top of the tower.

The Artifact absorbed light, then reflected it in stained-glass patterns, embroidering the air with radiance. It was pretty, and seemed to serve as a tourist attraction.

I approached the guide at the entrance of the Magic Tower and spoke.

“I am Raphael, Lord of Isaac.”

The guide answered that my name had been granted free-entry permission.

When I entered the Magic Tower, an enormous iron door stood before me. It was an elevator. When I stopped in surprise, the receptionist who had been watching me from beside it approached with a smile.

“Ah, this is your first time visiting the Magic Tower, is it not? First-time visitors tend to be startled....”

I quietly stood there, humoring the receptionist as she explained with a giggle.

The guide’s attitude toward me, as though dealing with someone who had lived in the countryside all his life and had only now visited a big city for the first time, carried a subtle sense of superiority.

“Now, look here. You see this mark shaped like an arrow? It indicates where it will move. The Magic Tower’s basement has practice rooms necessary for Magic Training, while the Magic Tower’s main facilities are located on the upper floors. Since you came to see the Master of the Magic Tower, you should move upward, yes?”

When I nodded, the receptionist pressed the elevator button and made a fuss.

Watching the elevator doors slowly open, she clapped, then opened her palm toward the elevator as though introducing a person.

“You saw that, did you not? When you press the button like this, the door opens....”

The receptionist entered the elevator with me, then pointed one by one at the buttons that went up to the seventeenth floor and smiled.

“What the numbers here mean is that they indicate the floor you will travel to by riding this elevator. If you simply click one of these buttons, it moves straight to that floor. Fascinating, is it not?”

“Yes. It is.”

With the guide’s help, I went to where Ian was likely to be. It was one of the many lecture halls in the Magic Tower.

Recently, Ian had often been teaching magic to other mages affiliated with the Magic Tower.

They said he was in the middle of a lecture right now. Would I be interrupting him?

I waited for his class to end. Ian’s class ended about twenty minutes later.

I stood near the back door of the lecture hall and waited for the class to finish.

Students came out through the back door one by one, and most of them had graying hair.

A class taught directly by the owner of the Magic Tower.

To attend it, one must have needed at least one thing, whether it was a high position in the Magic Tower or conspicuous talent.

Seeing it like this, Ian certainly was no ordinary mage.

THUMP!

Then someone struck my back from behind. It did not hurt, but I was so startled by the attack that had come without even the slightest warning that I leapt forward.

When I turned around, Ian was standing there.

It seemed he had used teleportation. I was inwardly flustered that he had used such grand magic just to tease someone.

“I thought it would take a long time, but you came quickly. You said you had something to do.”

“It is over. I thought my heart was going to drop.”

“I did it because I thought it would be amusing, but I did not think you would be that surprised. Sorry. Let us go to my room first.”

I wondered what had gotten into him, but I decided to accept it roughly.

“You have a room? Do you eat and sleep here?”

“I do.”

Then again, in such a large Magic Tower, it made sense for there to be a few private rooms for the Master of the Magic Tower.

I followed Ian into the elevator. He pointed at the panel marked with floor numbers and said,

“This is fascinating, is it not? The Master of the Magic Tower before the previous one designed it, and back then, magical engineering had not developed the way it has now. I think it is impressive that he even thought of something like this. I was slightly surprised when I saw it as a child too.”

“Yes. I have never seen anything like this either. It is very fascinating. How did they make something like this?”

“There are many things like this in the Magic Tower. Look at all of them before you leave. You have plenty of time now.”

“Yes. I will.”

---

We moved to the top floor of the Magic Tower. Ian seemed to use the entire uppermost floor alone, and perhaps because it was the Master of the Magic Tower’s private space, it looked impressive from the entrance onward.

A flow of blue mana stretched across the floor, and every door opened on its own wherever Ian walked.

“I made most of the things here.”

“That is amazing. It is impressive. Wow. How did you make things like this?”

“I am good at magic.”

“Yes, you are the best.”

Tap, tap.

When Ian struck the floor twice with the sole of his foot, a box on wheels came rolling toward us.

It resembled a modern suitcase, and when Ian reached out his hand, two drinks popped out. Ian held one out to me.

With the heart of a country bumpkin visiting a city for the first time, I clapped and put on a startled expression.

“Wow. How fascinating.”

“I made this too.”

“Wow. How many spells are inside this? It is fascinating!”

“Twelve. The key is that it can both cool and keep things warm, but the weight it can move on wheels has to be larger than it seems, so it is a difficult technology. It will take time to commercialize.”

After speaking, Ian lay back into the air as though collapsing.

Then, astonishingly, the air gathered together and supported him.

This one was genuinely fascinating, so I tried lying back to imitate him, but I fell on my rear. Ian chuckled and lifted me with Telekinesis, then pushed me again with Telekinesis. This time, a cushion made of air received my body too.

“So, what was the thing you had to do?”

“Do you remember Agares? I had a promise with him.”

I briefly summarized what had happened in the North and explained it to Ian.

After hearing my explanation, Ian snorted.

“As if that bastard would actually listen to you. He only said that, and after you left, he probably killed the demi-humans.”

“I do not think so.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do not think he would.”

When I showed signs that I wanted to stop talking about this subject, Ian shrugged.

“Fine.... If you say so, then I suppose that is how it is. So why did you come again? Right, magic. What do you want to learn?”

“A type of magic? You said it before, did you not? That I should focus on high-efficiency things.”

“That was because that was what you wanted back then. Things needed when fighting others. That field usually called Combat Magic. I am good at everything, not just that. Anything.”

The Combat Magic Ian referred to tended to be simple.

It was standardized around firing some powerful thing to hit a target, so compared to magic useful in daily life, it was straightforward.

That was also why I did not go out of my way to spend time on that kind of magic.

Most magic useful in daily life came out on the market as Artifacts, so it was more useful to simply spend money.

However, while visiting Ingrid, I felt there were several points that left me wanting.

Cold protection was exactly that. Artifacts were fundamentally used by charging them with Mana Stones, and most of them had fixed outputs.

That was even more true of Artifacts whose uses were obvious, like Cold-Protection Magic.

Even if one wore a cloak enchanted with Cold-Protection Magic, in some regions it would be hot enough to make one sweat, while in others there would not be enough heat for it to feel like one was wearing anything at all.

Artifacts or tools for avoiding heat were similar, and if I was going to learn magic useful in daily life, this side seemed good. When I explained that to Ian, he nodded.

“Something like that is easy. Follow me.”

I boarded the elevator with Ian again.

I blinked as though I found it fascinating. Judging by Ian’s faint laugh, my acting seemed rather excellent.