◈ Episode 223. If an Explanation Is Needed (1)
The Magic Tower.
The atmosphere flowing through it was anything but ordinary.
“To be honest, I’m already worried……”
“How many people will end up wiping away tears this time?”
“I think I’m just going to give up on this conference. I don’t have the confidence.”
Was it because of the pressure of the regular conference drawing near?
That wasn’t wrong.
But to be precise, it was a little different.
What the skilled mages feared was not the regular conference.
It was the preliminary verification in the Topaz Hall that had to be passed before the conference.
Step—As they went up and down the stairs of the Magic Tower.
Their gazes naturally turned toward the Topaz Hall.
The skilled mages could not forget the sounds they had heard from that place.
“I still feel like my stomach is churning……”
And rumors, once they had no feet, tended to grow exaggerated.
“Hey, did you guys hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“No, about the Magic Tower ghost story……!”
“A ghost story? What is this, a school? What nonsense are you about to spout now?”
“No, it’s not nonsense. I definitely heard it, okay? You know, what the skilled mages were saying! They said whenever the regular conference gets close, pitiful sobbing never stops coming from that Topaz Hall.”
To call them fledglings would have been generous.
Everything about the Magic Tower was unfamiliar to the players. Moreover, apprentice mages had little to do with the regular conference. It was only natural that they wouldn’t even know that preliminary verification took place in the Topaz Hall.
Thanks to that, the ghost story spread quickly among the players.
However, despite the rumors.
The truth of the ghost story could not be confirmed.
The Floating Garden.
“……
Wait, is that true?”
“Huff, huff, of course it is!”
The skilled mage Linne was breathing hard.
Jibril, who was also a skilled mage, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.
“Chief Lee Hoyeol is not participating in the preliminary verification? Is that true? Is it absolutely certain?”
“Um. Miss Jibril, let me catch my breath for a moment……”
“This is a serious matter, Linne!”
“I-It’s true! I just confirmed it and came back!”
There was a separate reason Jibril was interrogating Linne.
Jibril was not the type to be frightened in advance by the preliminary verification process.
Yes, it was because it was Hoyeol.
“That is impossible by my common sense!”
The weight of a chief.
Chief Lee Hoyeol was the one who bore that weight entirely. One could tell simply by the way he personally signed countless applications to leave the tower despite his busy schedule, one in which major affairs never ceased.
And that Chief Lee Hoyeol was not participating in the preliminary verification?
“That means there must be a reason.”
Jibril muttered meaningfully.
“……
What on earth could be going on?”
For him to be absent from the preliminary verification?
Apart from Jibril, however, the faces of several skilled mages brightened. Chief Lee Hoyeol was the one who had brought a storm of tears to the Magic Tower. And now he was not participating in this preliminary verification?
“Isn’t this our chance……?”
“……
I changed my mind. I’m going to apply for verification right now.”
“Damn, I’m glad I applied for preliminary verification even knowing I’d get shattered.”
But that was a tremendous misunderstanding.
The fact that Hoyeol had vacated his place.
Meant that he had prepared an arrangement to fill the vacancy.
In the Topaz Hall, it was not a storm of tears but a chilling wind that was blowing.
A gloomy voice echoed through the corridor of the Magic Tower.
“Next, Skilled Mage Andante Luce.”
That was right.
The senior mage of black magic.
Matisse Dean Karl.
The man whom even the other senior mages feared.
(In truth, it was only Benshi.)
He had taken Hoyeol’s place.
“Please, do not disappoint me, Andante.”
For the skilled mages, it was truly one mountain after another…….*Contradiction.
There was no word that expressed my current feelings better than that.
“Mm.”
Green tea-flavored cookies I had bought because they were half off.
It wasn’t because the taste of those cookies seemed decent.
Yet not quite satisfying.
It was because I had been freed from one of the chief’s duties.
The preliminary verification in the Topaz Hall.
And it was thanks to none other than the quest the Tower Master had given me.
“How deeply regrettable.”……
Before that, get your subject straight, Grandfell.
At this rate, anyone would think I was someone regretting the green tea cookies, wouldn’t they?
Naturally, this emotion was regret toward the preliminary verification.
This damned sense of responsibility.
In any case, this was an extremely weighty duty of the chief.
Of course, I did not pass it off to just anyone.
“I believe you will handle it well.”
I entrusted my vacancy to Matisse.
After all, Marcelo was already in charge of more than one or two duties even now.
If it was Matisse, who had once been the leading candidate for chief mage before Marcelo.
Then filling in for my absence would be more than enough for him.
-“I will repay Your Excellency’s trust.”
Matisse was someone who rarely engaged in external activities to begin with.
Yet at my request, he had ended up taking charge of preliminary verification for the first time in his life.
In that sense, I should treat Matisse to a cup of tea.
I recited.
“There are still many unnecessary procedures in the Magic Tower.”
No matter that there was a quest involved.
Grandfell was not the kind of person who would push his own burdens onto someone else without a rational reason. Even so, the reason I had asked Matisse to handle the preliminary verification was nothing special.
It was because of the Magic Tower’s regulations.
“This once, I shall abide by them.”
Yes. We have to abide by them. There’s no helping it, Grandfell.
Even you think it’s strange, don’t you?
For a participant in the regular conference to also be in charge of preliminary verification.‘That goes beyond meddling.’Anyway, participating in the regular conference.
Seriously, what a fate.
I checked the quest window.[Quest: Found a School]
You who have achieved lofty magical accomplishments.
Prove your achievements at the regular conference.
And announce the founding of a new magic.─Present “Reversal Magic” at the regular conference. (In Progress)
I knew it from the moment he suddenly turned into a cat?!
The Tower Master truly was sly.
Should I say he was very good at bait-and-switch tactics?
Founding a school was no small thing to be reluctant about either.‘Still, no matter what, it’s better than being the next Tower Master…….’Without realizing it.
I had been thinking such weak thoughts.
Anyway, what kind of conference presentation was this, with my lot in life?‘If it were really some great accomplishment, maybe that would be one thing.’Reversal Magic.
That was, literally.
Something that worked just by doing it in reverse.‘What do you mean, found a school and even present it…….’However, not only the Tower Master.
Marcelo was also utterly serious.
Marcelo’s voice, highly excited, suddenly came to mind.
-“According to the regulations, in order to ascend to the position of Tower Master, one must prove one’s accomplishments and contribute to the Magic Tower. With Your Excellency’s Reversal Magic, you will more than fill the required contribution value. It is magic on a level that cannot even be compared to the theoretical magic I founded.”
No, I’m telling you, I don’t have the slightest desire for promotion, Marcelo?
If I went by how I felt, I would want to abandon a quest like this.
But after hearing Marcelo’s words, I found myself tempted without realizing it.‘……
Contribution value.’That must mean [Relationship]
and [Influence], right?
The human heart was truly sly.
The desire to max out everything if possible.
And at the same time, the material greed of me, Lee Hoyeol, surged up.‘If I reach the maximum and activate the [Authority] function…….’Would I literally be able to control the Magic Tower as I wished?
Suddenly, I remembered the determination I had when I first set foot in the Magic Tower.
If such a day truly came.
I had vowed to use the magic tools piled up in the Magic Tower however I pleased.
Probably.
Of course, this damned pride would never allow me to uproot the Magic Tower for selfish desires……. But I had experienced it in Yusra and in Muon, hadn’t I?
That having high relationship and influence never caused any loss.‘Good, let’s do it.’In truth, it had been quite a while since I had made up my mind positively.
The problem was that making up my mind did not solve everything.
Because how was I supposed to present it?‘Marcelo, even the Tower Master, couldn’t understand it.’No matter how kindly I explained it.
Would the mages attending the regular conference be able to understand it?
The problem did not end there.
Because if it was the Grandfell I knew, he would surely go one step further there.
“And yet there is no magic more intuitive than this.”
I was already worried.
Afraid he would instead rebuke the audience for failing to understand.
That was why I was doing my utmost.
It meant I was preparing the presentation seriously.
“However, I shall understand.”
Moreover, the Magic Tower was no longer the closed-off Magic Tower of the past.
More players than before would participate in the regular conference as mages. Thanks to that, my every move would spread across the world through the players’ fingers.‘……
Please, let’s just not do anything embarrassing.’Still, life was unknowable.
In reality, Reversal Magic was nothing special.
Yet with it, I was going to found a school in the Magic Tower.
Would it really be strange to call its name the Bubble School?
I was already embarrassed even now.
Scribble, scribble—From now on, I had to package that bubble to make it look as plausible as possible.
Before the vast audience of the Crystal Hall.
I had to gild my bubble.
I swept my quill pen across the page and swallowed a groan.……
The green tea cookie tasted especially bitter.*The day of the regular conference.
The mages who checked the conference schedule were aghast.
“T-The final order is……?”
“Chief Lee Hoyeol’s presentation?!”
“So this is why he did not participate in the preliminary verification!”
“What? Chief Lee Hoyeol is presenting?!”
The skilled mages, including Jibril and Klee, could not hide their astonishment. Was Chief Lee Hoyeol not a man who held many positions, aside from being the chief of the Magic Tower?
Klee was sincerely impressed.
“He really is incredible. Enough to make me feel respect.”
The cultivation method for elixir herbs.
Klee had experienced that pressure while preparing her presentation for the regular conference. Needless to say, her mind had been endlessly complicated not only during preliminary verification, but right up until the moment she stood on the platform in the Crystal Hall.
“Even while I was eating and sleeping, thoughts of my research never left my mind……. But Chief Lee Hoyeol prepared a conference presentation while carrying out his other duties, didn’t he?”
Linne, who had been silent, seized on that point.
“No. Strictly speaking, that isn’t the case, Miss Klee.”
“……
Pardon?”
“Well, Chief Lee did not participate in this preliminary verification, did he—ow?! M-Miss Jibril?! W-Why are you suddenly pinching my arm?”
Jibril poured a look full of contempt onto Linne.
“If you are at least a skilled mage, it would be good for you to familiarize yourself with the Magic Tower’s regulations, Linne. By common sense, do you think a conference presenter can conduct preliminary verification on another person’s research?”
“……
Ah.”
“That remark was a little hasty, Mr. Linne.”
For Klee to add a word as well.
Just how disastrous a slip of the tongue had it been?
When Linne shut his mouth, Jibril’s expression grew serious once again.
“I’m sure he’ll give an incredible presentation. If it’s the Chief!”
Apprentice mages.
The players’ thoughts were not all that different.
The regular conference had not even begun yet.
And yet the player community was already filled with posts related to the conference.──────The official schedule is out lolololololololIs this for real? Chief Lee Hoyeol is presenting ㄷㄷIs something huge coming at the end???
Looks like he’ll finish the finale properly for real lolJust Homen──────Their mouths itched, but no one could open them carelessly.
As mentioned, there was still time before the opening.
And yet for some reason, every senior mage was seated in the Crystal Hall.
Someone whispered.
“……
It really must not be an ordinary presentation.”
Even the elder mage, Yugwid, was there.
Thanks to that, the regular conference.
Began amid expectations swollen like foam....
To speak of the result first.
The ripple effect of this regular conference was truly the greatest in history.
Not only in terms of magical achievement.
But even beyond the Magic Tower, among the public as well.
To every person in the entire world, what 『Reversal Magic』 was.
Had been unmistakably imprinted.
That was right.
It began with a small commotion.
The final order.
The moment Hoyeol stood on the platform.
Someone muttered quietly.
“……
Claudi?”