39. Ghost Story (5)
When Stella’s cadets gathered, they usually met in places like cafés or terraces and held elegant little tea parties. You could say that was the very textbook image of a noble-style gathering…
but commoners didn’t really need to go that far, did they?
So Flame went to a chicken place.
“…Chicken?”
“Yangnyeom chicken.”
“No, I mean, chicken is….”
“I said Yangnyeom chicken. Not gonna eat it?”
“I mean, I am, but….”
“Yeah. You like this kind of stuff.”
Eizel hesitantly stabbed the chicken with her fork. Anella, who was sitting beside Flame, had already torn off one drumstick and was happily chewing on it.
“You shameless bitch. There are three of us here and only two drumsticks, and you just snatched one for yourself?”
“Mmph! Mmff!”
…Though apparently she’d acquired it by less than peaceful means, because Flame ended up extorting it away from her.
“Go ahead. You can eat. I’ll allow it.”
“Okaay…”
It was hard to see why permission was even necessary to eat something like this, but somehow it still felt awkward to just dig in.
“Eat plenty. This big sister’s paying!”
Eizel liked junk food.
Pizza, chicken, hamburgers.
Of course, those weren’t exactly cheap enough for commoners to eat freely, so she didn’t get them often.
Wasn’t there a setting that said that later, when she was invited to a grand banquet of high nobility, she stared so hard at a piece of cheap fried chicken instead of the luxurious spread that Jeremy and Hae Wonryang both fell for her on the spot?
‘In that sense, she’s kind of like me.’
Flame too preferred food like this over noble-style cuisine.
Caviar, foie gras, truffles?
I’d never even tried them, but even if I did, I didn’t think I’d like them that much.
Steak and all that? Forget it. Just grill it up fast and wrap some samgyeopsal in lettuce with ssamjang—that’s the best.
And so the three girls quietly talked over chicken and—not beer—but a glass of cola.
“So, why did you suddenly come looking for me?”
“Ah, well…”
“Why? Were you curious about where that Ahjussi went?”
“N-no! Not at all! Honestly, that’s ridiculous.”
When Eizel snapped in outrage, Flame burst out laughing. With a straw in her mouth, she casually tossed out a little information about Baek Yuseol as though it were nothing.
“He’s staying in some city in the west right now. Said he’s got business or something. I don’t really know, but since it’s that Ahjussi, it’s probably important.”
“I see…”
For a moment, Eizel found herself questioning her daily life.
Was there really any meaning in this life of hers, where all she did was study like mad? Somewhere right now, someone was steadily stacking up the steps needed to save the world—was it really right for her to be absorbed in nothing but studying?
‘…No. I’m doing the right thing.’
The reason Baek Yuseol didn’t study was because he had already accumulated endless knowledge across tens of thousands of regressions. If she wanted to even approach someone like him, shouldn’t she study even harder?
“Ahh—I don’t know. In a situation like this, where on earth did he even go?”
The atmosphere at school was bad.
Clearly, the ghost stories circulating through campus were connected to the current incident, and yet she had no idea how it was supposed to be solved.
But.
The truth was, Eizel might actually know…
how to enter the 7th Main Tower.
The reason she couldn’t be certain was because she had heard the story so long ago, from her father.
A ghost story her father had told with a playful tone, as though he were just trying to scare a child.
She hesitated over whether or not to tell Flame.
‘Hmm…’
Flame silently waited.
In the original romance-fantasy story, Eizel had never considered the information she held about the 7th Main Tower ghost story to be especially important.
Because of that, she ended up casually passing the ghost story along to Hae Wonryang. The curious boy dug into it deeply, and that would later become a tremendous help in resolving the ‘Black Corrosion’ incident.
But reality was different.
The point of contact between Eizel and Hae Wonryang was practically zero now, and at present there were only two people who knew anything about the ghost story.
Even so, Flame could not make use of the knowledge Eizel possessed on her own. That knowledge was… something that no one but Eizel’s father could have known.
So she waited in silence.
Waited for Eizel to make up her own mind and be the first to speak.
“Nom.”
While Anella alone kept eating chicken without reading the room at all, Flame and Eizel sat there with even their forks set down, trapped in their own thoughts as time passed in silence.
Then at last, after finally steeling herself, Eizel was the first to open her mouth.
“…There’s actually a secret about the 7th Main Tower.”
“A secret?”
“Yes. There are stories that it never existed to begin with, and also stories that if you look at old photographs, it did exist at first but then disappeared.”
“Right.”
Whether the 7th Main Tower had ever truly existed was still heavily debated, even now.
“But it did exist. Up until fifty years ago.”
Eizel slowly began to speak.
“Abeline Starberg. You know who that is, right?”
“…I do.”
Anyone who had read the original romance-fantasy The Ducal Daughter would have heard that name at least once.
In this world, there were people in each era whose achievements and fame were enough to call them the ‘protagonist’ of their age. Two hundred years ago, that had been Eltman Eltwin, and half a century ago, it had been Abeline Starberg.
Abeline Starberg was someone who had amassed such overwhelming achievements that it was hard to believe they had all been accomplished by a single person.
It was said that if someone were to write a fantasy series based on his life alone, it would easily span dozens of volumes.
Unfortunately, in the original romance-fantasy story, his story was only ever summarized briefly and he never properly appeared in person.
But in the end…
his final outcome was utterly unworthy of a protagonist.
‘Betrayal to Black Magic.’
He committed what the magic world considered the worst crime imaginable and became a Black Mage.
He killed three members of the Council of Elders, reduced the previous Full Moon Tower Master to a mana cripple, and then fled. It was said that he had survived all the way until now and still ruled over the Black Mages.
Most people believed that after betraying the magic world, Abeline had gone into hiding somewhere in silence.
But Eizel knew exactly where he was now.
‘The Black Mage King.’
The very Black Mage said to possess the greatest strength in the world—strength no one could oppose—was Abeline Starberg himself.
Why he betrayed the magic world, or what exactly happened, wasn’t important right now.
The one fact that mattered at this moment was this:
Abeline Starberg had isolated the 7th Main Tower in an unseen world, and hidden something inside it.
“What’s asleep inside the 7th Main Tower isn’t treasure, and it isn’t some legendary artifact either. Back then… Abeline said he had hidden ‘the truth’ inside it.”
“The truth…”
“Yes. Though no one knows what sort of truth it is.”
Perhaps it had something to do with why Abeline betrayed the magic world and left.
Anella spoke as if it weren’t much of a big deal.
“But what if that truth isn’t really anything special? Headmaster Eltman isn’t even looking for it, is he?”
“I’m not sure about that myself… But maybe, just maybe, we might be able to find that place. And if we can… would you be willing to go in there?”
She couldn’t help speaking cautiously here.
Because this was, in the end, asking Flame to shoulder danger and sacrifice.
But Flame gave an unexpected response.
She nodded without a moment’s hesitation.
“Of course we have to go. Is that what you were dragging this out over?”
“I see…”
For some reason, just hearing that a mage as capable as Flame would go with her made Eizel feel relieved enough to press a hand to her chest.
“Then first…”
Now that she truly felt she could trust her, Eizel was just about to tell her one of the ghost stories she knew.
At that very moment—
“Hey, hey. The 4th Main Tower is in chaos right now.”
“Hurry, come take a look. Something happened.”
“What? What happened?”
All at once, the area around them grew noisy.
If the commotion was loud enough to disturb even the inside of a restaurant, then it meant something seriously unusual had happened.
The moment she heard the students talking, Flame shot up from her seat and ran out at once. Eizel hurried after her, and Anella followed too, not understanding what was going on at all.
The 4th Main Tower happened to be nearby, and after following the source of the rumor all the way to Corridor D-17 on the 30th floor, they found the faculty already controlling the scene.
“Silence! All students step back!”
“Return to your dorms at once! If you don’t listen, you’ll receive demerits!”
The crowd was packed so densely, with faculty mixed in trying to control them, that it was hard to see what was going on.
All the windows in the corridor had been shattered, and the floor was soaked with water.
But one thing stood out more than anything.
[Great Mage, do you fear the truth?]
[What is it that you are trying so hard to hide?]
Bright red letters floated over the waterlogged corridor floor.
The professors were trying desperately to erase them with magic, but it clearly wasn’t working. Cold sweat ran down their faces.
‘Of course it won’t work.’
Flame understood why the professors couldn’t erase those words with magic.
The writing had been written not in reality, but in the Hidden World.
Ordinary magic that could only interfere with reality would never be able to erase even such simple phrases.
“Enough.”
At the voice of a young boy that rang out from somewhere, all the commotion stopped.
The students went mute as though their voices had been stolen, and the professors stiffened and stepped aside awkwardly.
The crowd split apart as if by miracle, and through the gap walked a single boy.
Eltman Eltwin.
The man who always wore a smiling, easygoing expression now had a face set in hard lines.
He crossed the water-filled corridor without making even a sound, looked at the floating letters, then clicked his tongue.
Then he took out a single scroll and sealed all the writing into it.
People responded as expected—‘As expected of the Headmaster’—but Flame watched him from a different angle.
Why had he gone out of his way to take out a scroll instead of using his own magic?
Because it was obvious.
Even his spatial magic hadn’t been able to touch it.
That was why he had needed to use a scroll imbued with another mage’s magic.
Eltman swept a shadowed gaze across those gathered, then asked a professor in a low voice,
“Were there any injured?”
“No one was hurt, but…”
In a gloomy voice, the professor pointed behind him.
There, three girls were huddled together, clutching one another and trembling.
Their appearance was familiar.
The elegance pouring off them.
And the red ruby brooches each wore, as though proud to display their affiliation.
‘Huh?’
At the exact moment a sense of something being terribly wrong flashed through Flame’s mind—
a professor said something unbelievable.
“Cadet Hong Biyeon of first-year Class S… is said to have disappeared beyond an unknown extradimensional space.”
That was…
something so massive that even Flame had never imagined it happening.
