I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 16 - The Blue Tower (2)

Chapter 16 – The Blue Tower (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The standing of mages on this continent had a rather peculiar structure.

Their status was generally high, as in most fantasy worlds.

But mages affiliated with a Tower gained something more.

Once they passed a certain circle, they held a position comparable to that of nobles.

Part of the reason was the difference in skill between mages inside the Towers and mages outside them.

But fundamentally, the real reason was the Towers themselves.

There were only six Towers in the entire world.

They monopolized the production of various items needed by the United Kingdom, including by high-ranking nobles.

So the combat power of mages, combined with the exclusive production of needed goods, elevated the Towers’ authority to the level of noble power.

And Alon knew very well that the authority of a vice tower master, practically the Tower master’s deputy, rose high enough to pierce the sky.

…Even knowing that.

‘Isn’t this treatment a bit much?’

Outwardly expressionless, inwardly exasperated, Alon looked at the vice tower master in front of him.

Wrapped in the Blue Tower’s symbolic blue cloak.

With equally blue hair hanging to her waist.

One hand holding a pen.

The other supporting her chin as though everything in the world annoyed her.

Her name was Penia Kraisinne.

In Psychedelia, she appeared only once or twice in the main story.

Even so, she was a prodigy of absurd talent who reached the seventh circle at the age of twenty-two and possessed an Origin of her own.

…Though at the current point, before the original story began, she seemed not yet to be Tower Master and still only at the sixth circle.

“As I said before we met, I came to discuss the Time Gate.”

“What sort of discussion?”

Without even looking at him and while still wrestling with the pile of documents in front of her, Penia responded.

Alon continued.

“I can erase the Time Gate.”

At his words, Penia’s gaze finally snapped toward him.

Her eyes held a flicker of interest.

But only for a moment.

Soon she made an openly disappointed face and clicked her tongue.

Anyone looking at her would have seen plain contempt.

“If you’ve finished speaking, leave.”

“I haven’t heard an answer.”

“An answer to what?”

“I just said I can erase the Time Gate.”

“Ha.”

At Alon’s remark, Penia let out a disbelieving laugh and looked him over.

“Excuse me. And who exactly are you?”

“Alon Palladio. Count Palladio.”

“So our dear Count Palladio says he can erase the Time Gate?”

“Yes.”

“I see. So our dear Count Palladio can erase the Time Gate?”

“…Why are you acting like this?”

At the blatant sarcasm, Alon asked calmly.

“Do you think you’re the only one? Do you know how many people come here wanting the treasure a Time Gate spits out and claim they can erase it?”

“I’m not lying. If you guide me to the Time Gate, I’ll show you immediately.”

“How many people do you think have said exactly that to my face?”

“I can definitely erase it.”

At those words, Penia let the pen in her hand fall onto the desk with a sharp clack, frowned openly, and suddenly released mana.

Crack.

She had not built a spell.

This was only a wave of mana.

A wave scattered raw and without structure according to her emotional state.

And yet even that was enough to cause abnormal phenomena throughout the office.

The whole room shook as if an earthquake had struck.

Scrolls and parchments piled on the shelves fell instantly to the floor.

And in the middle of that.

“Listen.”

“You got lucky because the trash around you died at just the right time and you ended up becoming count. I understand that much. I even understand needing a strong reversal now that the truth of that is starting to leak out. But you don’t get to throw that kind of tantrum here.”

Penia’s eyes burned with hysteria as she lowered her voice and spoke.

Hearing that, Alon realized two things anew.

The first was that, despite looking buried in work, she was unexpectedly well informed about what happened outside.

She had, after all, said exactly what people had begun whispering these days.

That the countship had fallen into his hands through luck because the right people died at the right time.

And the second thing he realized was this.

The anger he had felt at her treatment of him until moments ago, the anger that had risen hot enough to feel unbearable, suddenly cooled as if it had been cured outright.

‘She’s scary.’

Even without reaching the seventh circle, she could create abnormal effects throughout an office simply by scattering raw mana.

That alone made Alon keenly aware that Penia was an inhuman being who had already stepped far beyond ordinary people.

‘I shouldn’t act up. She could fold me in half.’

Even while understanding that merely letting that mana be shaped into an actual spell could put his life in danger, Alon kept his face blank and said,

“If you don’t trust me, then I’ll wager my entire fortune.”

“…What?”

“Exactly what I said. If I fail to erase the Time Gate, I will donate my entire fortune to the Blue Tower. No. Since this would be a private deal between individuals, I’ll hand it directly to you.”

“What kind of nonsense…”

“Of course, you don’t need to wager anything. I alone will place something on the line. If you need it, I’ll even swear to it.”

“…”

Penia frowned at Alon’s words, while he continued with the same empty expression.

“For the amount of time you’d be spending, it doesn’t sound like a bad deal.”

After holding her silence for a while, Penia answered.

“Write up a contract.”

* * *

Penia Kraisinne.

A prodigy without parallel who had reached the sixth circle at the age of just twenty-one and was acting as vice tower master under her teacher, the master of Blue Tower.

She led Alon underground and stood in front of the chamber containing the Time Gate.

“Here. Open this door and go in, and you’ll see it.”

At her words, Alon moved without hesitation and took hold of the handle.

“Remember this. We’ve already written the contract, and I absolutely won’t show mercy. If you fail, the entire Palladio fortune becomes mine. Understood?”

Penia spoke as a warning.

Alon turned his head slightly to look at her.

His eyes remained emotionless.

“That won’t happen.”

Creak.

With that, he opened the door and went in without hesitation.

Watching his back, Penia recalled the way people currently judged Alon.

Once, he had been described as the hidden mastermind of House Palladio, the one who killed every other heir and became count.

But in the last three years, the evaluation had shifted greatly.

Now people more often treated him as a lucky fool who had become count simply because the others died.

Rumors still floated around claiming he had his reasons for staying inactive.

Even so, Penia, after meeting him in person, believed the latter rumor was much closer to the truth.

‘Judging only by atmosphere, he does look first-rate. But the moment he came here claiming he would close the Time Gate, that was already the end of it.’

Penia acknowledged that the atmosphere Alon gave off was indeed unusual.

Lifeless eyes.

A face so thoroughly stripped of emotion that he hardly seemed human.

For an instant, even she had found herself falling silent.

But that was only atmosphere.

After measuring his talent, Penia could only laugh inwardly.

‘He has some talent. But only the sort that gives him slightly above-average magical sensitivity. His mana core is absurdly small. At best he’s at the very end of the second circle. And he doesn’t even have the Eye that becomes mandatory from the sixth circle onward.’

Count Palladio possessed almost no true talent.

No Eye, which was essential for becoming a high-ranking mage.

No vast quantity of mana.

His magical circle had only just reached the second.

His magical sensitivity was somewhat good, but that was all.

And among the many talents a mage could possess, magical sensitivity alone did not rank highly.

So from Penia’s perspective, the very fact that someone with talent at that level had come here confidently claiming he would erase a Time Gate was proof that the later rumor was the correct one.

With that thought, she turned her eyes to the violet tear blazing in the center of the chamber.

The tear.

Or, as mages called it, the Time Gate.

It was exactly what it looked like, a connection to an unknown subspace.

An extremely troublesome phenomenon.

Time Gates appeared mainly where mages gathered.

More precisely, in places where great amounts of magic were used.

And once created, they caused heavy collateral damage around them.

Sometimes beings from another world crossed through the gap.

Sometimes the surrounding mana was sucked away all at once, leaving the whole area in a mana vacuum.

Penia had heard that in the early days, various attempts had been made to destroy Time Gates by force.

But as far as she knew, not a single mage had ever succeeded.

If enough long-term research had been done, perhaps a method might eventually have been found.

But no such method existed now.

In the first place, even if a Time Gate appeared suddenly, it usually vanished naturally after one to three months, spitting out a single relic before disappearing.

No one yet knew why that happened.

Because of that, mages had never invested huge amounts of time and money into researching a way to erase something that would disappear on its own.

…Except that the Blue Tower’s case was different.

The Time Gate in its underground chamber had remained for over two years, causing trouble and refusing to vanish.

That was why Penia, after thinking through all this, stared at Alon, who had by then approached the Time Gate and was still doing absolutely nothing.

Time passed.

He still took no action.

Penia clicked her tongue and was just about to tell him to get out.

Then.

Tap.

Alon formed a hand seal.

“?”

Penia found herself looking slightly intrigued.

He was not using a staff as a medium.

He was using his own hands.

A style only found in ancient grimoires, and even there described as primitive.

“Get out. Just…”

But curiosity was only curiosity.

Penia had no intention of giving Alon any more time.

She did not believe that someone who had clearly not learned proper magic and instead used bizarre old-fashioned methods from strange books could close a Time Gate.

And yet.

“…”

The moment he softly chanted something.

“Ah, just get ou…”

Penia’s mouth stopped.

Not only her mouth.

Everything stopped.

Her half-open lips.

Her irritated eyes.

Her body.

Even her breathing.

Stopped.

And then.

She saw it.

The thing appearing before the count.

Rip.

At the exact point Penia’s eyes were fixed on, what had seemed only black opened with a revolting sound.

Once she perceived it, she understood that it was an eye.

An eye with two crimson rings.

That was all.

It merely appeared that way.

If that had been all, it would have been bearable.

But.

“…”

Penia’s talent, and the Eye that was indispensable to advancing beyond the sixth circle, instinctively grasped the essence of that thing.

She did not know what it was.

But she perceived.

And in perceiving, she understood one thing.

It was something absurdly simple.

A single word itself.

It was…

“Ghk.”

At the instant she nearly reached the answer, Penia slammed the brakes on her own thought.

Though she had even forgotten to breathe, her mana moved by instinct and severed the thought process.

Because she knew.

The thing floating before that count was precisely the sort of thing one must never comprehend.

The moment one understood it, ruin was guaranteed.

A poisoned chalice.

That was what it was.

And therefore, the instant she barely succeeded in stopping her own thought.

Grin.

The eye that had been staring at her smiled.

Then, with a black hand that had appeared from nowhere, it lifted its index and middle fingers and gently brought them before Penia’s lips.

Absolute silence.

She understood immediately that this was Alon’s demand.

By the time the eye vanished and the magic ended, Penia was blinking with eyes filled completely with fear.

* * *

Standing where the violet tear had vanished, Alon let out a small sigh.

‘Done.’

To someone like Alon, who had closed Time Gates many times in the game and already knew the method, closing one was not especially difficult.

After all, a Time Gate was not closed through magic.

One used a certain special item and method.

The reason Alon had bothered using a magic effect at all was because there were still several objects he wanted to obtain through Time Gates in the future.

So he had deliberately used one of the more convincing spells he had employed before in order to deceive Penia.

Then, as he picked up the relic and turned his gaze.

“…?”

He made a puzzled face.

Penia looked wrong.

She looked like someone who had seen something she absolutely should not have seen.

That sight made Alon briefly wonder whether she had realized the method for closing the Time Gate after all and whether his bluff had failed.

Just as he was about to speak awkwardly.

“I-I absolutely won’t tell anyone.”

“…That would be appreciated, but there is no need to…”

“N-no, absolutely, absolutely not. I will never tell anyone. I am actually very good at keeping my mouth shut.”

As Penia nodded frantically, half-crying and breathing harshly, even slipping into honorific speech, Alon could only tilt his head.

“…?”

‘Why is she suddenly acting like this…?’

He truly had no idea.