I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 15 - The Blue Tower (1)
Chapter 15 – The Blue Tower (1)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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There were three great shadow families in the Kingdom of Asteria.
House Altia in the north.
House Xenonia in the west.
And House Palladio in the east.
Originally, these three families divided the kingdom’s underworld among themselves.
By the time the original story began, they were all meant to have grown strong enough to move Asteria from the shadows.
House Palladio had already fallen from that seat once Leo was assassinated and its organization dissolved.
Which meant only two remained: Altia and Xenonia.
On the surface, those two entering into an alliance did not sound like a disaster.
“Is it true?”
“Have you ever known me to lie, Count?”
“…Fair.”
“Because the agreement was made in the underworld, there may not be much visible contact between them on the surface.
But the alliance itself appears certain.”
Even so, Alon took it as bad news because he knew roughly what the balance of power looked like in the original story.
When the protagonist first arrived in Asteria, the three shadow families all possessed tremendous strength.
The only reason none of them could dominate the others was that each house spent its energy checking the other two.
But now House Palladio had effectively withdrawn from that struggle.
If House Xenonia and House Altia united, then there was effectively no one left in Asteria capable of stopping them.
Given enough time, the two houses could knead the kingdom however they pleased.
Alon thought back to what he had once said to Kallia and briefly wondered whether his own words had caused the one alliance that absolutely should never have formed.
Then he calmed down.
Even if he did not fully understand Roria’s personality yet, he understood Kallia’s perfectly.
Kallia Xenonia could not tolerate standing level with anyone, much less below them.
She would commit any cruelty necessary to climb higher.
An alliance with someone like her could only ever be temporary.
That thought reassured him a little.
Still, there was no such thing as a one-hundred-percent certainty in life.
“Evan.”
“Yes?”
“Bring me some writing paper later.”
At that moment Evan remembered something else.
“By the way, Count, you asked me to check whether there were any rumors about Seollang.
There are.”
“Really?”
“Apparently she’s been making a name for herself in Colony.
People have even started calling her the Golden Flash.”
Golden Flash.
The title sounded familiar, and Alon let out a breath of relief.
He had believed Seollang would not simply die in the desert, but he had still been worried enough to ask Yutia about her in his most recent letter.
“Good.
I’m glad she’s doing well.”
“Colony is the kind of place where, if your reputation as a fighter rises high enough, people treat you better than nobles.”
“If you’re strong enough there, you can stand on equal footing with kings.”
After saying that, Alon accepted the writing paper from Evan.
“Oh, and in about a week, I’m planning to visit a mage tower.”
“A tower?”
“Yes.
It’ll take some time.”
“At most two weeks, won’t it?”
Alon shook his head.
“Closer to a month.”
“A month?
The Green Tower is only about a week from here, isn’t it?”
“I’m not going to the Green Tower.
I’m going to the Blue Tower.”
That explained the length.
The Blue Tower lay between Caliburn and the labyrinth city.
It would take over three weeks of travel to reach it from here.
“Do you really need to go that far?” Evan asked.
“I have business at the Blue Tower.”
That was all Alon said.
He went on writing a letter to Kallia.
Once Evan realized there would be no further explanation, he simply said he would begin the preparations.
Left alone, Alon finished the letter, sealed it, and sighed.
Three weeks in a carriage is going to be miserable.
Still, he had a reason.
He needed an item there, one that would support his half-broken talent and help with his mana problem.
That made the trip unavoidable.
While thinking about the Blue Tower, he also remembered the labyrinth city beside it: Lartania.
In Psychedelia, the labyrinth city was almost the only place where one could grind for levels and items without advancing the story.
Its great underground labyrinth rewarded those who descended deeper and deeper with enormous treasure and experience.
And yet no one had ever reached the end.
The reason was simple.
Every five floors, the player had to leave the labyrinth and a full day would pass.
You could neglect the main story while grinding, but time in the world still moved forward.
Ignore the story too long, and one day you emerged from the labyrinth only to find the world ruined.
If you wanted to avoid that, you had to balance exploration with the main plot, and by then the game usually ended around the seventieth floor.
Even so, one old post faintly survived in Alon’s memory.
Someone had once cheated their way down to floor one hundred and fifty and found even deeper levels below.
Thinking about Lartania naturally made him think of Rine.
I hope she’s doing well.
He had never sent her there to become an explorer.
He sent her there to become a magical appraiser.
Lartania was overflowing with artifacts and relics dragged up from the labyrinth every day, and appraisers were in constant demand.
A certified magical appraiser could identify detailed properties and make a fortune.
Given Rine’s talent, that path suited her perfectly.
Her gift, too, should make the work easier.
Though thinking about it, I may have given Rine the smallest gift of all.
Compared with what he had arranged for the others, the item he gave her was narrowly specialized toward appraisal work.
If it looks too lacking later, I’ll support her a bit more.
With that settled, the day passed peacefully.
* * *
In the labyrinth city of Lartania, the south district held an appraisal shop called Merd.
It should never have been particularly successful.
Even in a city that valued appraisers, most customers naturally gathered around the central district by the labyrinth itself.
There was no obvious reason for anyone to come all the way south.
And yet Merd was crowded almost every day.
Its clientele were unusual as well.
Not only A-rank explorers who ventured deep into the labyrinth, but even foreign nobles and…
“The appraisal is complete, my lord.”
“Oh?
And this relic?”
“A device that continuously produces flame when fed mana.”
The city lord of Lartania himself.
He accepted the item from the masked woman and laughed delightedly when he saw the black eye-shaped inscription stamped beneath it.
“Oh?
So it was a relic that could take an inscription?”
“Yes.”
“And what does this inscription do?”
“The efficiency is much higher.
A mere handful of mana should sustain the flame for an hour.”
“Remarkable.
You’ve been an enormous help, as always.”
“It’s nothing.”
Once the lord left, the office fell quiet.
The masked woman removed her crescent-marked mask.
It was Rine.
She watched the inscription in the lord’s hand through the window and sighed softly.
That black inscription was the reason Merd, despite its location, earned more than any other appraisal shop in the city.
Rine could do more than simply identify high-grade relics.
She could place inscriptions on certain artifacts and pull out even greater power from them.
That said, the ability was not hers.
Her own gift, the Library, let her understand artifacts far more accurately, determine how they should be used, and identify which ones were compatible with inscription.
The actual power to place the inscription came from the Great Moon’s gift.
In the adjoining room hovered a golden eye wreathed in a pale blue halo.
`[248/500]`
As she looked at the number hanging above it, Rine remembered the day she first discovered what the gift really was.
At first, like the others, she had not understood why the Great Moon had sent her to the labyrinth city to become an appraiser.
She knew he came from the forgotten age of the Outer Gods, and she guessed it had something to do with fighting the black things, but she could not see the connection.
The moment she found his gift, however, she had no choice but to change her mind.
It was called the Watcher’s Eye.
At first glance, it only seemed able to appraise relics containing a limited amount of mana.
But by using her Library, she realized immediately that it was anything but ordinary.
She undid the multiple seals layered around an object that did not even exist in her Library’s records.
Only then did the simple golden sphere reveal its true nature and awaken a function.
Inscription.
It allowed her to stamp certain rare relics from the upper levels and enhance their abilities.
The strange part was that inscription did not feel like an ability.
It felt more like a mechanism for offering sacrifice.
Whenever an inscription was placed, the relic grew stronger, yes.
But Rine knew the eye was absorbing something from the relic in exchange, something even she could not identify.
And each time, the eye itself changed in essence.
It is my task to awaken this thing.
From that realization came two more.
First, only she could properly carry out the awakening.
The eye only responded to upper-level relics with specific patterns.
Use the wrong relic, and it actually lost accumulated power instead.
Second, once awakened, this eye would likely hold enough power to stand against the black things.
So Rine continued to feed it relics in accordance with the Great Moon’s will.
There were two purposes.
To kill the Black Wolf.
And to do so according to his will.
As she gently touched the floating golden eye, a faint, unsettling sort of faith lit her eyes.
* * *
Three weeks later, after the long carriage ride he had warned Evan about, Alon arrived at the Blue Tower.
He had intended to meet the Tower Master.
Instead, with the Tower Master absent, he met the Vice Tower Master.
And the reception was catastrophic.
“Come on.
Hurry up and say what you came for and leave.
I’m busy.”
At that greeting, Alon could only stare.