Chapter 21

Northwest Alteon.

A massive city of clustered buildings dominated the space from a distance.

Huge.

This enormous mass occupying more than half the northwest was a society operating by its own rules and a planned small city.

The Magic Tower.

It was a collective term for the entire city-like structure that had formed widely around the central Magic Tower, where mages ruled as the dominant class.

Players were mainly assigned missions here to assassinate merchants dealing in forbidden goods, back-alley scum tormenting people while avoiding the mages’ eyes.

‘And mages who joined hands with such scum, I heard.’

The ruler of this place was the Tower Master.

He was evaluated as managing the Magic Tower rationally, but.

Behind the scenes, it was set up that he conducted all kinds of unethical research like human experimentation for the sole reason of advancing magic.

Seo-jun climbed up the wall.

Then he headed toward the center, leaping over the rooftops of buildings surrounding the low-built towers.

At the center stood a massive tower built up in layers of white bricks.

While it couldn’t compare in height to buildings in the real world, in terms of ground area it was similar to or broader than decent buildings.

Seeing many people coming and going through the large entrance that seemed easily 3 meters tall, Seo-jun came down from the rooftop and joined the crowd.

“Well, let’s go assassinate now.”

-Assassination X Destruction O

-Magic Tower infiltration (walking through the front gate)

-LOL that’s what I thought

-Seo-jun-nim, you do know about the Magic Tower, right?

About the Magic Tower.

Seo-jun had deliberately only kept basic settings and hadn’t dug into the details.

It would be fine to preview through external sites, or to uncover settings by gathering various information while progressing through the game, but.

He wasn’t aiming for that kind of safe broadcasting.

“No? I’m seeing the Magic Tower for the first time right now. I just need to climb to the top, right?”

-Wow today too just brainless headbutting

-This is why we watch your stream.

-The Magic Tower might be a bit tough, I think?

Seo-jun mixed into the crowd and entered the Magic Tower as he was.

“Well. Let’s try it first.”

Indeed, the interior was spacious and tall with an open atmosphere, just as it had appeared from outside.

Seo-jun looked around.

People wearing long-sleeved robes occasionally caught his eye.

“Are those NPCs mages? There are fewer than I thought.”

Then were most of them ordinary people?

-Of course mages should be rare.

-Originally the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors of the tower are like a market concept. That’s why they’re incredibly wide and have many ordinary people too. From the 4th floor is the real deal.

-Want to pickpocket?

“I won’t pickpocket.”

Seo-jun firmly cut them off and looked around the interior in detail to go to the next floor.

The centers of the 2nd and 3rd floors were open to give a sense of openness, and the shops were attached to the walls.

Like.

“A shopping mall?”

Of course it was more of a complexly tangled ant nest structure, but if you took just the core parts, it brought to mind a commonly imaginable shopping mall.

-Lmao

-It is similar.

-There are schools and libraries too!

It seemed like an interesting place in many ways.

Seo-jun was able to find the circular stairs connecting the 1st to 3rd floors and climb up to the 3rd floor.

And.

He spotted an NPC who appeared to be a mage wearing a hood and followed him.

The NPC navigated through the ant nest-like complex passages of the 3rd floor heading somewhere.

As Seo-jun followed him, he felt the ground gradually getting higher.

And at some point, no people appeared around them.

The NPC entered beyond a door guarded by 2 guards, and Seo-jun stopped for a moment.

He thought this was the door to the 4th floor, but since he couldn’t be certain, he looked at the chat window.

If it was flooded with ‘lol’s, Seo-jun had come to the wrong place, and if not, Seo-jun had come to the right place.

Fortunately, it seemed he had come to the right place.

“Hmm. Guards again?”

-Those guys are just food now lol

-Shall we destroy their weapons? Shall we parry them?

-Let’s beat them up quickly

“Right.”

Seo-jun approached them.

“This is a restricted area…”

After lightly parrying to subdue both, Seo-jun opened the quite large iron door.

And the moment he stepped one foot inside.

Seo-jun’s body froze.

Whoosh.

“An intruder. Too bad.”

From a distance, someone threw a fireball generated on their palm toward Seo-jun.

Instinctive movement tried to guide Seo-jun’s body, but it wouldn’t budge at all.

Feeling the tingling sensation like when static electricity is generated, it was probably a paralysis state.

‘Do I have to get hit like this?’

Then, the paralysis was released.

And the magic was already close at hand.

Fortunately, thanks to his excellent reaction speed, the moment the paralysis was released, he immediately threw his body to the side and dodged the fireball.

“Crazy… I really thought I was going to die.”

-There’s someone who survives this?

-Reaction speed is insane lmao

-Ah, we could have added the first death of the season.

-I knew you could do it all along!

-Shows you didn’t study the Magic Tower tsk tsk

“Phew.”

Seo-jun let out a sigh of relief and began being cautious of his surroundings.

If the situation from just before repeated itself, it could be troublesome.

Whoosh.

“Lucky you. Then how about this?”

From the opposite side of the vast lobby, a mage generated one fireball in each hand and threw them.

But this time there was no restraint applied to Seo-jun’s body.

‘Should I dodge while approaching?’

No. There was a mission.

Seo-jun used the Weakness Detection skill.

To face the Tower Master, it would be good to observe the weak point of magic.

The background instantly reversed.

And within that field of vision, the fireballs burned even more fiercely.

He could see lines drawn across the fireballs.

Seo-jun smiled and cut both rapidly flying fireballs in half at once.

“Wow, so magic really does have weak point too.”

He hadn’t expected this.

Also, since magic was an unfamiliar field to Seo-jun, he couldn’t get any sense of the weak points at all.

-Oh magic gets cut too

-Should I really get Weakness Detection? The skill looks so cool lol

-It’s cool because the streamer has that face, don’t get confused

Seo-jun smiled and charged at the mage.

Four more fireballs flew at him, but with weak points already detected, they couldn’t cause Seo-jun any damage.

“Urgh.”

The mage’s HP was small.

Unlike close-combat NPCs who required multiple hits even for mobs unless you parried them, this was different.

“This is fun. Is this the 4th floor? I came to the right place, right?”

-Yes

-Yeah

-Yes

“Hmm, then why did you guys won’t say anything earlier?”

-Shh.

-Quiet.

-Stop!

-No spoilers

“No, this isn’t really a spoiler…”

-Shh.

-Sush.

-Shh.

How come not a single person will tell me?

Seo-jun watched the constantly rising chat without missing any, but there were no chats giving him the answer.

“Sigh, I won’t ask because you’re being petty.”

Probably.

It was either opening the door or stepping on something wrong.

For now, this was the best he could deduce.

‘I’ll have to go to the next floor after all.’

The top of the Magic Tower was the 8th floor.

Seo-jun looked around the 4th floor to go to the next floor.

Various miscellaneous items.

Laboratories decorated in various different atmospheres along the wider-than-expected passages.

And mages in the laboratories who paid no attention to Seo-jun and were absorbed in their own work.

This was the true Magic Tower, different from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors.

“Hmm, still, I’m an intruder but I can’t stand this kind of treatment.”

Seo-jun deliberately went next to a concentrating mage and struck down something like a flask with his sword.

-What? Lol

-Character level LOL

-His way of thinking is different from ours.

-???: They were going to pretend not to notice, but why is he like this

“You, who are you? Are you an intruder?”

“As expected. You’re reacting.”

Seo-jun had bothered the researching mage with the intention of examining magic a bit more.

The moment the mage discovered Seo-jun, he activated a magic circle carved on the back of his hand.

He instantly moved toward the entrance of the room, distancing himself from Seo-jun, then cast magic.

“Oh, teleportation.”

Ice arrows generated in mid-air and flew at him.

Seo-jun used Weakness Detection once more to check the grain of the magic.

Weakness Detection’s cooldown was 1 minute.

Seo-jun confirmed the weak point of the ice arrow and cut along it as is.

He still couldn’t get a feel for it.

Seo-jun waited quietly, intending to check more.

But the mage couldn’t cast more magic.

“What? Is he being careful because this is a laboratory?”

-Nope.

-Good imagination lmao

-Info) Teleportation consumes tremendous mana. He’s just ran out of energy.

Seo-jun checked the chat and made an embarrassed expression.

No wonder he looked particularly exhausted.

Seo-jun dealt with that mage and looked at other rooms.

Besides ice arrows and fireballs, he also confirmed the weak points of various magics like magic that bound through plants or trapped by making rocks rise up.

Actually, these were NPCs he could win against even without knowing the weak points.

‘In this game, weak points are an additional element.’

But.

Thinking of the ruler Richard, who took no damage at all until his armor was destroyed, he thought knowing weak points might be necessary.

If he hadn’t known all the weak points, he would have tried hitting for about 10 hours hoping the durability would wear down completely, or looked for other methods, but thanks to weak points, he finished it in an instant.

Seo-jun was preparing for exactly that.

Because he had an intuition that the person who issued the mission was really the developer.

‘They wouldn’t have put such conditions for no reason.’

Seo-jun thought this as he climbed the stairs to the 5th floor.

“Finally found it. No, why do I have to separately find stairs to go to the next floor?”

-So people don’t skip the 4th floor and look around lol

-Ah lol mages can use teleport devices (for real)

-The stairs are for emergencies.

“No, if they’re for emergencies, they should definitely be connected. What if people can’t find where the stairs are while evacuating and can’t escape?”

-That’s true

-Are you listening, developers?

-The stairs are for aesthetics.

-Don’t try to understand mages’ sensibilities.

“Well. I don’t need a key.”

After coming up to the 5th floor, Seo-jun found the same iron door and opened it.

Seo-jun discovered a guard and mage standing behind the door.

But for some reason, even after discovering Seo-jun, they were just waiting inside.

The guard drew his sword and raised his shield, and the mage generated magic on his hand, but that was all.

“Look at these guys?”

-Lmao

-Did he catch on?

-This floor is sensory confusion

-I wonder?

Seo-jun spotted the chat of one person who couldn’t resist saying what they knew.

“Ah. This time it’s confusion? Something like I get a debuff when I go inside there? And they’re waiting for that?”

-Ah!

-He caught on.

-Who was that person who chatted that

-No sense lmao

“Thank you. Since you’re caught anyway, tell me some more.”

Seo-jun read the chats that told him refreshingly and gathered information.

To reach the top of the Magic Tower, there were two paths. The outer wall and internal passages.

“Ah, so each floor applies debuffs, and to avoid this, climbing only the outer wall doesn’t work because alarm magic goes off. The 5th floor is confusion.”

To use internal passages, you had to receive debuffs.

The 4th floor was the temporary paralysis he experienced.

The 5th floor was sensory confusion where left and right senses were reversed.

The 6th floor was slowness that made you sluggish.

The 7th floor was darkness that took away vision.

-Yeah so when climbing the outer wall, you go through the interior for 4th and 6th floors.

-Darkness debuff is hopeless. Let’s avoid just that one.

-Confusion is hopeless too

-Just climb the outer wall

-You’re not really going to climb the outer wall, are you?

“How pathetic. When have I ever cowered and infiltrated? I don’t do that kind of assassination.”

-That wasn’t assassination in the first place lmao I’m going crazy

-Yeah this is what I’m after.

-Nice!

Seo-jun imagined the sensation of reversed left and right in his mind and walked into the interior of the 5th floor.