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After a moment, Reinhardt shoved an unsophisticated dagger covered in runes towards Valletta.
“Ah, this is my gift. Don’t let go of it for a second and carry it with you.”
Valletta looked at the dagger with suspicious eyes and looked at Reinhardt hesitantly.
“… What is with this dagger?”
“If someone bothers you, don’t put up with it. Just stab them in the eye with this.”
He spoke in a calm voice, as if he was giving his regards.
What a cruel thing to say with smiling eyes.
“Then you will die.”
“Master, there’s no need to be worried. I will bear all responsibilities.”
Watching Reinhardt leisurely tilting his teacup after he finished speaking, Valletta picked up the cooled teacup without answering.
The corner of Reinhardt’s lips, who had pushed the dagger inside of Valletta’s sleeve, rose in satisfaction. Valletta’s sigh deepened.
“… Okay.”
Valletta bitterly replied. Her odds of winning against him, if she compared their strength, was very low.
Reinhardt raised his chin and looked at Valletta as she drank her cold tea.
She put down the teacup at the end, with a gaze so persistent that she didn’t know if her tea was going into her nose or her mouth.
“Why?”
“Aren’t you curious about the writing on that dagger, Master?”
“Are they not runes?”
“Yeah. You didn’t ask what the letters are.”
Seeing his smiling face made her afraid to ask. Is it some kind of weird magic?
With an anxious gaze, she glanced at the dagger in her sleeve.
“It isn’t an explosion or something, right?”
Valletta asked anxiously.
Reinhardt would do something like that. The reason is simple. It’s because he’s Reinhardt.
Reinhardt burst out laughing at Valletta’s words. Valletta turned her head because his pretty face and refreshing voice seemed to reflect a halo above him.
‘That face is dangerous.’
Over the past 10 years, how much has she trained herself not to be deceived by that smile?
Valletta still hasn’t forgotten the words she whispered to herself every time she woke up in the morning for over 10 years.
“No way,” he said.
Valletta vacantly stared at Reinhardt’s gentle and sweet round eyes folded.
Reinhardt was the only one she knew who had such a terrifying smile.
“It’s simply a permanent spell that would break a magician’s shield.”
“Shield?”
“Magicians reflexively create a shield when their life is threatened, and the dagger that I gave you could break it.”
“Ah…”
“Don’t worry, if you pierced their eyes, their mana would also dissipate.”
Reinhardt supported his chin and listlessly muttered.
So, if their eyes are pierced then they would already be on the verge of death, will they be able to endure it without dispersing their mana?
Valletta struggled to get rid of the doubts in her mind. In any case, it would be better to have something than nothing for self-defense.
“Okay.”
She got up. She felt suffocated, so she thought of looking for an exit to go out.
She could at least be able to summon the spirits to protect herself. As Valletta got up from her seat, Reinhardt got up too.
“Why?”
“I want to go somewhere else.”
“Aha. Call me anytime, Master.”
Valletta glanced at Reinhardt and turned her head.
“I will wait.”
And she closed her eyes, ignoring his words.
***
As she thought of wanting to leave, her body shook for a moment and her view was reversed.
Valletta was no longer in Reinhardt’s room on the top floor.
It wasn’t the hallway that she set her feet on, it was an arched staircase. The stairway surrounded by gloomy gray bricks was suffocating.
“Jin.”
She called for the spirit that she had summoned before, but there was no reply.
When summoning a wind spirit, of course the wind will blow even if it is indoors.
Seeing that the wind did not even blow, it seemed like it was impossible to summon a spirit inside the Magic Tower.
She wasn’t actually expecting much. She vaguely saw something similar in the book.
‘It said that there’s a power inside the tower that was opposite to the spirits.’
Valletta slowly stepped onto the endless round arched staircase.
There are no windows, let alone doors. When she looked back, there were only rough, gray brick walls around.
“The 86th floor?”
After going down the stairs for a while, she arrived at a space with a stairway on one side and a doorway engraved with antique patterns on the other.
Above the semicircle-shaped door is a stone slab that says 86th floor. As she moved a little closer to the door, it opened wide.
Light shone through the dimly lit stairs. She pushed her head in first, and then slowly put her foot inside.
The smell of books wafted over –  it seemed to be a library.
There were several people wearing robes inside, and the others were standing and reading books as if looking for materials.
The door closed on its own as she set her feet completely inside.
She stopped in front of the entrance and slowly looked around.
‘… It’s quiet.’
Valletta’s eyes narrowed. Then she quietly hid between the bookshelves.
She didn’t need to hide, but since everyone was wearing a robe to say that ‘I’m a magician’ in this situation, whereas she’s wearing a one-piece dress and fur slippers, it would be embarrassing.
“The Tower Master this time is a ghastly pale child, did you see?”
As she walked slowly through the bookshelf, Valletta’s steps stopped at the sound of the voices.
She held her breath as she stood there and opened her ears.
“Is that so? Come to think of it, it must have been hard for Bartio-nim to manage this place. Then that person came and suddenly he’s the Magic Tower’s Master…”
“Is he really the Magic Tower’s Master? He looked foolish enough to laugh at. Besides, I heard that he brought something like a Sokor into the Sky room. Is he crazy?’
Valletta the Sokor narrowed her brows at those words.
It was an ancient word for ordinary people who could not use magic, and it meant ‘stupid’. She remembered reading in the novel that the magicians were using the word to prove their superiority.
“In the Sky Room? Crazy.”
The Sky Room was a room with transparent glass on all sides that existed at the top of the tower.
It was the room that Valletta was just in. It was the closest to nature, and it was a room only given to the master, so only the manager Caspelius and the Magic Tower’s Master were allowed to enter.
“I don’t like it, a kid who is still wet behind the ears…”
“I heard that he was wandering around as a slave for a Sokor noble. Even if he hadn’t awakened yet, how could he be a slave when he was born with the ability to become the Magic Tower’s Master?”
It’s not that he couldn’t run away, he didn’t run away, Valletta thought. Even when she told him to go, he still refused to run away, and above all, he is the Magic Tower’s Master. That is why Caspelius bowed down to him.
‘He’s going to die.’
She just hopes that Reinhardt did not hear them.
“No, it doesn’t matter even if he does hear them.”
She murmured in a very low voice and then turned away. Whether somebody dies or not does not matter to Valletta. Besides, as far as she can remember, there was once an incident where the Magic Tower was turned inside out.
A magician had pretended not to know that he was foolishly and proudly ignoring Reinhardt, causing him to purge the entire magic tower.
At that time, she thought that he was dealing with the people who badmouthed him or talked behind his back…
‘I don’t know the details since it was only one line.’
At least it wasn’t her concern.
‘After that, the tower will collapse once.’
The reason was…
She can’t remember this as well. It was a time when Reinhardt didn’t appear for a while. She went out the door while thinking and went down the stairs again.
As she descended for a while, she became slowly exhausted.
“… We’re not supposed to go down like this, are we?”
As she saw no one walking around the stairs, it was clear that there was a transportation magic circle inside the tower.
However, whatever it is, she needed mana to activate the magic circle, and Valletta had no mana at all.
Valletta, annoyed at the stone steps, lifted her head.
“Jin! Nereid!”
She looked around her and called out the spirit’s name again.
They were Jin, a higher wind spirit and Nereid, a higher water spirit. But it was still silent. There was no wind sound nor drop of water, let alone full wind and pools of water.
Valletta sighed and resumed her steps that had stopped.
“Come to think of it…”
Now that Count Delight has been destroyed, what will happen to the slaves that he had left behind?
The children or the people who were illegally captured to be kept as someone’s slave.
Count Delight also owned a cage where the slaves were kept.
‘I have to release them as well.’
It was clear that if they wouldn’t pay the caretaker, they wouldn’t even take care of their meals.
Then all the slaves imprisoned there would almost certainly die of starvation. After realizing it, she started to get worried.
Valletta touched her forehead.
After a while, she found the next door.
“82nd floor…”
Do I have to walk down all the way to the first floor like this? Valletta let out a sigh.
The appearance of the door on the 82nd floor was no different from that on the 86th floor. As she got closer, the door opened automatically.
Valletta’s eyes widened at the smell of grass wafting into the tip of her nose.
“Oh my gosh.”
Valletta’s mouth fell open. The room on the 82nd floor was like a vast field. The ground was all grass, and it was divided into sections and filled with green things, with many herbs, and grasses.
When she tilted her head, the sky was blue and the clouds were floating. The light from the rising sun was intense, but not too hot.
‘Is it magic?’
It looks real.
‘Can I summon them here?’
“Did you not know that we shouldn’t open the door here carelessly?”
As she was mesmerized by the scenery before her, Valletta turned her head when she heard a voice.