"Aso is definitely insane!""Agreed!"
"Agreed!"
My companions concurred with my words, while a tremendously large iron ball rolled behind us…
"Such a cliché and outdated trap. He"s definitely an old artifact from the previous generation."
I insulted Aso as I ran and finally managed to find a slight indentation in the wall that I was able to hide in as the iron ball rolled by.
Why didn"t I simply smash the iron ball to pieces? d.a.m.n it! It was actually coated with a layer of top-quality adamantine! Don"t even mention shattering it, just slightly being brushed by it would feel like a train crashed into you… What? You"re saying I should use a fantasy world a.n.a.logy, instead? Fine then, it would feel like having a battering ram which was enhanced to +12 smas.h.i.+ng right into your head. Even if you had a c.o.c.kroach"s survivability, all that would remain of you would be little pieces.
"He"s definitely a pervert with mental issues! That"s the only possible reason he would place all these d.a.m.ned traps. What normal mage would turn their own residence into such a trap-infested location?"
I finally had time after escaping the iron ball to drag the silly cat who was biting on my head as always off my head. She was gritting her teeth and cursing Aso"s name as I did so.
"d.a.m.n him so much! He deserves to remain unloved for eternity! How is this place a mage tower? This is clearly a death trap compet.i.tion."
When we first entered, the first three floors of the mage tower were quite easy to deal with. But, the further we progressed, the stranger things became.
"Please solve this mathematical equation within 20 seconds and provide an accurate answer. If you fail to solve this equation within the time limit, a trap mechanism will be activated..."
Well, it was only a six-digit multiplication problem. Mages were required to have excellent logical processing and calculative abilities, so I understood why there would be such a question in here. Not to mention, we had the "Demon Professor" Harloys with us so such a math problem wouldn"t possibly defeat us!
"…And after you find the correct answer to that math question, please sing the climax of "Ah, the Beautiful Sun!" three times in a row. You aren"t allowed to have more than three off-key notes, and you aren"t allowed to make more than two mistakes."
"The h.e.l.l! Aso was also a fan of opera singing? Could this get any more ridiculous!"
"…17, 16…"
From a certain standpoint, the spirit of the mage tower was like a mage"s incarnation. A mechanical voice droned the twenty second time limit, but it was still seemed to be filled with wicked pleasure, as if someone was watching us and enjoying the show. It really felt quite unpleasant.
"…34294204242 is the answer, hurry up and sing! Didn"t you receive Aso"s inheritance?"
Harloys solved the six-digit multiplication problem at an astonis.h.i.+ngly high speed. But, when she hurriedly urged me to begin singing, I could tell that all her anxiety was faked. Her eyes had an expression of delight at being able to enjoy this spectacle.
"…Just because I received his magical inheritance doesn"t mean I received his music inheritance! Don"t count on me for singing. Sing your sister!"[1]1
"How did you know that my sister is a great singer?"
Before we even managed to argue for long, the spirit of the tower, which was acting as the host, returned.
"…13, 1, 0!"
"It skipped all the seconds in the middle? Could it get any eviler?!"
The silly cat and I said the exact same retort in unison. Before we even finished our retort, that incredibly evil spirit of the mage tower answered us.
"You"re complaining about not giving you the promised amount of countdown time? I"ll have you know that the shortest ever successful record of singing the climax of "Ah, the Beautiful Sun" three times in a row took 5 minutes and 30 seconds! Even if I gave you two extra minutes, you wouldn"t have been able to accomplish it!"
Fine then, at least Aso knew that this was too difficult of a task to begin with, or perhaps simply an impossible one that wasn"t meant to be solved. Before we could even argue with the spirit of the mage tower, a panel opened up in the ceiling and dumped freezing ice water on us. However, what awaited us after this challenge were even more ridiculous ones.
"…Two-person three-legged ballet dancing? Not only that, it has to be on top of bamboo stakes? Does it count if I tie the cat to my shoe?"
"…Three embarra.s.sing or humiliating stories about my past that can make someone cry in sympathy? Not only three, I can even tell thirty! What? I"m also required to reenact the scenes? Dream on! Just activate whatever trap there is already."
"…A beauty contest for men while wearing bikinis? Never! Come, just show me what the trap is this time."
"…A tongue-twister that"s composed of many different languages? I"ll do it. No matter if it"s the immemorial elven language, dragon language, or dwarven language, I"ve mastered them all! What? This tongue twister even involves thirty-two different dialects? No problem, there are far more Chinese dialects! I"ve got this!"
And so, we shamelessly proceeded through the tower"s challenges, which firmed our resolve about one thing—no matter what, we were going to find and destroy the spirit of this mage tower!
"By the way, is it normally this troublesome to go through a mage tower?"
"No, normal situations would be that we"d be dealing with an anti-invader, full onslaught destruction mode. Or, a friendly mode for receiving welcomed guests. We obviously activated some sort of strange mode instead."
Everyone instantly looked at me. They apparently recalled the words I incanted that allowed us to enter.
"Oh, so that incantation must have been to activate the mage tower"s inheritance trial to test our worthiness to receive this place—silly cat, stop biting me!!"
Alright then, my attempt at acting innocent ended up failing. Everyone had expressions of "It"s all your fault." The silly cat"s ability to jump through the air and accurately bite me was also improving by the day.
"Well, it"s such a rare chance. Since this is apparently an inheritance trial, it would be quite nice to be able to receive a complete mage tower that"s in one piece."
At first, I thought that it would merely be a trial testing our magical knowledge and techniques, perhaps with only a few personality tests mixed in. Since Harloys and I were both here, it shouldn"t have been difficult. However, n.o.body expected just how "difficult" the challenges were.
And since we came to the conclusion that it was possible to obtain this mage tower, I became unwilling to use any large-scale destructive actions in order to break through to the end of this tower. And that was how we could only slowly play along with the wishes of the spirit of the mage tower.
"I suppose that all of these trials are designed to test our adaptability. But since it"s a trial to determine a potential inheritor"s worthiness, they shouldn"t all be this annoying. After the "Intelligence" trials are over, the next should be "Strength"…"
Before I even finished, the room in front of us opened by itself. Two three-meter-tall iron magical puppets trembled and then started to move, while a fire elemental pool was activated behind them, with numerous fire elemental creatures sp.a.w.ning from within.
Judging from my companions" "pa.s.sionate" expressions directed at me, it would seem that now would be a good time for me to shut up.
"…In order to test your concentration, please sing "Ah, the Beautiful Sun!" as you are battling. Otherwise, there will be a limitless amount of fire elementals continually sp.a.w.ning."
"Haven"t you had enough yet? I"m definitely going to destroy you."
"…For threatening the trial administrator, this trial"s difficulty shall be increased. Also, I have a name, just so you know. My former master named me "Meteor.""
Judging by the fact that two additional doors suddenly opened up with elemental creatures sp.a.w.ning in them as well, Meteor, the spirit of the mage tower, was quite dissatisfied with my comment and intended to make things difficult for us.
Mage tower spirits were one of the research results that mages came up with in the field of artificial souls. They were typically who mages trusted the most, as they acted as both stewards and research a.s.sistances. Mage tower spirits could even support a mage in casting large-scale magic spells. Some mages even treated their tower spirits like their own children or disciples. The quality of a mage tower spirit was directly proportional to the mage tower"s overall effectiveness.
From my past experience in meeting other mages" mage tower spirits, most of the tower spirits were just like robotic NPCs, only responding with one fixed sentence or answering to specific commands. The higher level a mage tower spirit was, the more humanlike in personality it would become. Any mage tower spirits that had their own sense of self and personality would be at an incredibly high level.
This mage tower spirit named Meteor was obviously such an incredibly high-level mage tower spirit. His personality seemed rather lively… fine then, perhaps I should say it was quite vicious. It even started cheering when it saw us busily locked in combat.
"…I"m definitely going to have to reset his personality."
Suddenly, I felt like I understood why the going kept increasing in difficulty. Since this was a top-level mage tower spirit with its own personality, and we were continuously cursing its "father" as we progressed, it would naturally hate us and want to make us suffer.
"It would seem that I accidentally dug a pitfall for myself yet again."
I took a deep breath, dragged the silly cat off my head again, and shook her, turning her into a pitch-dark magical sword.
"For the Lich King!"[2]2
I decided to shout out a cla.s.sical line while dark shadows enveloped the pitch-black magical sword. The sword itself also seemed almost crystal clear. Its magic was now activated.
Countless dark shadows appeared on the ground, transforming the entire room into a ghostly area. Endless shadows appeared on the walls as well, taking material form. Even these elemental creatures that shouldn"t have possessed the instinct of fear began to instinctively retreat. This was no magic at all—it was merely the summons of this magical sword when it was unsheathed. This was the might of a top-level weapon… but why did I feel like this scene made me appear like an antagonist instead of the main character?
"d.a.m.n, Harloys, you leveled up again? Are you changing yourself into Frostmourne?"[3]3
"…What"s Frostmourne supposed to be? Didn"t you name me Ice Calamity? Are you cheating on me with another sword?"
One of the greatest tragedies in life was to make references that n.o.body understood. Also, what was with the silly cat talking as if I was a husband who accidentally spoke his mistress"s name in his sleep, making her incredibly heartbroken? After awakening and becoming more and more like a pet cat, was she intending on awakening to a weapon as well?
"In the end, isn"t this all your fault!? Stop wasting time, they"re coming."
While elemental creatures possessed the instinctive ability to tell how strong an enemy was, the two gigantic iron magical puppets heading our way were pure slaughtering machines. Magical puppets had very limited intelligence and would follow a specific command to the death. However, this also meant that magical puppets would never stop attacking you unless they were totally destroyed or the command retracted.
*Clang!*
The magic sword I swung viciously crashed into an iron fist. However, the scene I expected of slicing through iron didn"t happen at all. Instead, a tremendous force knocked me away, with a powerful backlash from the forceful impact causing my hand and even my entire body to tremble. I hurriedly took two steps backward to mitigate the impact before I barely managed to steady myself. I was almost forced to resort to rolling on the ground, or, even worse, dropping my sword—one of the most common moves novices at a disadvantage would make.
"How is this possible? My Strength stat is on par with dragons!"
"…Look at that arm! He"s ridiculously rich!"
My sword scratched off some of the iron surface to reveal a pale gold that belonged to adamantine. This was actually an adamantine magical puppet, something I had never even seen or heard of before. This caused even Harloys to curse how ridiculously rich Aso was.
Magic puppets were the most common guards that mages used. It was quite easy to create low-level magic puppets. All that was required was to a.s.semble some "parts" into a puppet"s form and then use the power of magic to give it the ability to move by imbuing them with low-level artificial souls. However, how difficult a magic puppet was to deal with mostly depended on the quality of the "parts."
Flesh and blood magic puppets were famously weak. However, it was incredibly easy to gather the parts required to make them so undead mages were famously fond of using flesh and blood magic puppets. It was quite easy to create lots of them, and their weakness could be made up with the power of numbers. And if the undead mage wanted a higher-quality flesh and blood magic puppet, it was even possible to combine multiple smaller magic puppets into a single gigantic one.
Stone magic puppets were slightly stronger. Meanwhile, mud magic puppets and sand magic puppets had the advantage of being immune to physical damage. These two magic puppet types were the natural enemies of any physical skill related job cla.s.ses.
Stone and blood and flesh magic puppets were cannon fodder that were easily created, while metal magic puppets would const.i.tute the main forces. Since magic puppets were just puppets given the ability to move by magic, the parts that they were made of were the equivalent of their bodies. The stronger and more durable the body, the stronger the magic puppet would obviously be.
Iron magic puppets were basically perfect warriors that would be incredibly difficult to deal with. There were famously known for being incredibly strong, fast to react, difficult to damage, and being immune to all mental magics, making them one of the best guards. Mages would usually add their own personal flourishes, such as lightning, fireb.a.l.l.s, hidden weapons, oil, or poison traps on the iron magic puppets.
Even without those typically fatal traps, any metal magic puppet created from magic metals would become even stronger, multiplying their power levels by several times. Of course, something else that would proportionally increase alongside their power level was the cost to create them.
Metal magic puppets" parts needed to be refined out of the finest materials by blacksmiths. Enchanting a metal that was highly magic resistant would be immensely challenging, even for high-level archmages. It would typically take several months to finish. An ordinary iron magic puppet could be sold for several tens of thousands of gold coins, while higher-level metal puppets wouldn"t be seen on the market at all.
It was rumored that in the immemorial era, the ancient elf empire ruled by the gold elf royalty had once possessed mithril magic puppets as their guards. That would mean that these magic puppets were almost completely immune to magic, making them the complete counter to any mage. They were also evidence that whoever owned them was "ridiculously rich." And, right now, what we were currently facing was something even more ridiculous than mithril magic puppets as they even made the gold elf princess curse at their owner for being "ridiculously rich…"
"F***, that"s adamantine! These are adamantine magic puppets! Aso"s so d.a.m.ned rich!"
Just applying a layer of adamantine on top of a weapon would multiply that weapon"s value by several hundred times. However, it would also multiple the weapon"s weight by more than three times over. This incredibly high-density metal didn"t have any other special properties—simply its incredible durability alone made it far more outstanding than any other metal. Of course, the way some people saw it was that adamantine"s durability was almost at an indestructible level.
Adamantine was truly expensive—megexpensive, in fact. It costed greater than a hundred times more than its equivalent weight in gold. Thinking about how these two magic puppets we were fighting were actually constructed out of pure adamantine, I couldn"t help let out a few curses in my mind while also inwardly praising the st.u.r.dy nature of the floor we were on. After all, each one of these adamantine magic puppets had to weigh several dozen tons.
"Ptui! So ridiculously rich! I could even afford to construct my own mage tower by selling off these two little guys."
Even though I was exclaiming such things, these emotionless magic puppets wouldn"t be stopping for my sake. The higher quality the magic puppet"s parts, the stronger their Strength would be. These three-meter-tall magic puppets could actually be considered quite short among magic puppets, but their brute strength was more than capable of knocking out a dragon. These "shorties" also possessed great dexterity and speed due to their smaller size. The runes under their feet were even enchanted with speed-doubling acceleration magic. Even though they had pitch-black, unbecoming appearances, they were definitely the most dangerous slaughter machines of all.
"Hmph, Amanda #1 and #2 are the creations my former master was the proudest of creating. Unless you all are able to defeat them, you"ll never receive my recognition."
The mage tower spirit Meteor caught this chance to add fuel to the fire as I was busy battling. I was currently pincered by the two magic puppets, leaving me in a bad situation. Once again, I regretted not taking Adam, the best meat s.h.i.+eld ever, with me just because I was afraid of him randomly doing something to break this mage tower I wanted!
*Clang! Clang! Clang!*
The adamantine magic puppets rained flurries of punches and kicks upon me. I was under so much pressure that I could only remain where I was and focus on defense. The Ice Calamity magic sword that Harloys had transformed into was now cracked all over, while the force being transmitted to me through my sword simply from blocking their attacks had caused me to sink into the floorboard down to my ankles.
Magic puppets" attacks were incredibly simple and direct, relying purely on strength and speed, straight punches and kicks. They fought exactly like children, with no beauty or techniques whatsoever. However, the punches and kicks coming from these adamantine magic puppets made me feel like the entire world was constantly quaking.
"I"m almost about to shatter! Use the Cold Flames of Despair! Hibernation Chill"s 1% slow stacking is working too slowly against them!"
Indeed, it didn"t matter if adamantine made them possess physically and magically impervious defenses. Anything from this world could be pulled into my Frigidwinter Earth and reduced to an absolute zero state that would freeze them for eternity.
"No!"
"Stop trying to keep your abilities a secret. Aces are meant to be used when we"re in danger!"
"Never!"
"…Why?"
"Because if I freeze them with Frigidwinter Earth, even I won"t be able to unfreeze them afterwards. That means I won"t be able to sell off these two walking mountains of gold coins!"
"…You b.a.s.t.a.r.d who only cares about money but not your life! Go die by yourself if you want, but don"t drag me down with you!"
Notes:
[1] TL/N: "Your sister," as some readers might already know from other CN novels, is a common slang in Chinese that has a variety of meanings. I generally translate it as "the h.e.l.l" or something similar for readability.
[2] ED/N: Probably a WoW reference.
[3] TL/N: Frostmourne is a famous sword from the World of Warcraft franchise.TL/N: "Your sister," as some readers might already know from other CN novels, is a common slang in Chinese that has a variety of meanings. I generally translate it as "the h.e.l.l" or something similar for readability.ED/N: Probably a WoW reference.TL/N: Frostmourne is a famous sword from the World of Warcraft franchise.