Chapter 223: Mobius (7)

We stood side-by-side at the entrance of the magic tower. Although we had obtained perfect information, the thought of facing one of the hero’s party members made my lips feel dry already.

A man who came out to sweep the yard recognized Petunia Titi’s face and greeted her familiarly.

“Oh my, it’s the elf-nim who visited last time. But I apologize. The magic tower is busy with experiments right now, so it seems entry won’t be possible today. Mobius-nim has been continuously preparing for experiments for several days, and ordered strict security, saying even the slightest error is unacceptable. Therefore, outsiders cannot enter.”

“Outsiders can’t enter?”

Petunia Titi frowned as she said that. This was within the expected range. If entry on the first floor had been easy, the plan was to send Taffy straight up to the upper floors, seize the security room, and then take the elevator, but it was a shame it didn’t work out that way.

In that case, there was no choice but to use the second method.

Petunia Titi looked at me with her face flushed red, and I nodded, urging her to hurry. If we forced our way through like this, the alarm would just sound from the start. We had to sneak in amidst the commotion. Petunia Titi squeezed her eyes shut and shouted towards the mage.

“D-d-do you know who I am! I’m not an outsider! I’m a friend of the Archmage Mobius! A friend!”

The low-ranking mage flinched when she shouted and looked around. From the direction of the warehouse, guards were looking up and glancing over, and workers, mid-way through moving goods, had also stopped to focus their attention. Taffy hid within my shadow, and Milia and I took advantage of the diverted attention to quickly move towards the warehouse direction instead of the main entrance.

If entry was blocked on the first floor, the strategy was to draw attention to the first floor, and then, once the guards moved out, head to the basement.

“Huh? What’s going on! What is it!”

As we expected, the guards watching the warehouse area were slightly lifting their hats and heading towards Petunia Titi. Petunia Titi, performing a tantrum act she had likely never done before in her life, was skillfully making her face turn as red as a tomato.

“I! Am trying to meet my friend! How dare you butt in and make a fuss? Huh! Are you that great? Huh! Me, me, I’ll have you know! I’m a super famous elf even in the forest? You guys are gonna be in big trouble, big trouble!”

“Looks like you’ve done this a lot?”

Milia said that upon hearing Titi’s voice faintly. I chuckled at her remark and nodded. The workers in the warehouse turned around sensing our presence, but we moved swiftly with the shadows faster than they could spot us.

In the warehouse, filled with complex magical materials, we found the stairs leading to the upper floors. Since the warehouse organization wasn’t finished yet, the staff were crowded at the entrance, and we exchanged glances in a corner of the warehouse. Taffy began climbing up along the ceiling, and we carefully moved our feet, holding onto the stair railing.

I said to Taffy, hanging from the ceiling.

“Taffy. If you think you’ll get caught by a security device, just get out of the tower. Got it?”

Taffy nodded and then disappeared into a gap in the ceiling.

*******

Taffy slipped through the wall gaps as flexibly as an eel weaving through pebbles. In the world illuminated by her red eyes, she could see straight lines made of mana densely filling the space from ceiling to floor. It was a system designed to sound an alarm immediately if a mana-wielding being moved. Unfortunately, these simple measures were useless against Taffy. This was because the building had been designed without any consideration for an attack by an ancient vampire capable of turning her body into shadow. She carefully passed through relatively wide gaps, and at times, burrowed directly into the walls to start ascending floors.

After ascending like that several times, Taffy poked her head out in front of the letters that read [7th Floor]. The people moving busily were all wearing luxurious robes, and some, clad in sturdy magic armor, were looking at documents with stern faces. However, what they were researching was none of Taffy’s concern. She carefully burrowed under a desk and began observing the room with the blue door, her eyes darting around as quietly as a kitten. Blue door. Blue door.

“Hmm?”

Taffy tilted her head. This was because a blue door did not exist. Rather, this room seemed more like a library, a place where various mages came and went, exchanging research information. Where was the security room? Although the security devices were relatively few, where exactly was this place, where the average level of the mages walking around seemed quite high? Taffy looked at the numbers once more. It clearly said 7th floor. The mage had definitely said it was the blue-doored room in the center of the 7th floor. Why wasn’t there a security room here? Although it wasn’t a blue door, a door certainly existed in the center. However, that door was glowing white. There was no sign indicating what this room was for. Only a large, sturdy lock attached to it indicated that this room was a very important place. There was no password device like the mage had mentioned. Taffy weighed the possibility that she had misheard ‘blue door’ for ‘white door’, and the possibility that she had misread the numbers and ended up on the wrong floor. After considering both, she decided to believe she had misheard the door color. She reasoned that while one might mistake security devices or door colors, confusing the floor number was impossible. She hid her body back into the floor, then slid out like a shark and entered through the door’s gap.

*****

“Ah, fuck.”

We were climbing the stairs when we saw the floor list next to the staircase and couldn’t help but freeze. Milia also looked at the notice with a bewildered expression, as if she hadn’t expected this either. The notice stated it had been updated a few days ago and showed the current floor layout of this magic tower. I stopped my hurried steps and began counting slowly from the first floor with my finger.

“1st floor. 2nd floor. 3rd floor… Why is there no 4th floor?”

Milia also took a deep breath, her hand trembling slightly. She looked at me and asked,

“Why is it 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th floors? Why was this updated just a few days ago?”

I ran my hand through my hair and looked up. I couldn’t understand it. No, I couldn’t figure out what to do at all. The mage had definitely said the security room was on the 7th floor. Based on when was this bastard talking about the 7th floor? Was it based on today? Or before the change?

*****

Taffy lifted her head. The white room was illuminated with a white light, as if the outside had dyed it white. Taffy was almost under the illusion that her body was cooking even without sunlight. She cautiously peered out, only her head sticking out, to avoid any potential burns. Inside the white space, a giant mana stone was pulsing, and right before her eyes lay a control pad that could be operated by reaching out. According to the explanation she received from the mage, placing one’s hand on the control pad and infusing it with mana would allow control over the entire security room. It wasn’t the room full of monitors he had described, but the room did have a control pad, and there was a very suspicious-looking object right in front of her. Looking up, security devices were densely installed like a spiderweb. However, she couldn’t easily reach out. It was the door color that bothered her. He had said it was a blue door, so could this place with a white door really be it? Besides, didn’t he say the security room had a separate password? But thinking differently, the indicator for this floor clearly pointed to the 7th floor. Couldn’t it be that she simply misheard the color, or the mage got confused and misspoke? Couldn’t it be that some security measures were recently changed? Taffy nodded, deciding to think that way. And then she reached out towards the control pad.

*****

In a laboratory that was once the 6th floor, two mages were talking while pointing at a sign that read [7th Floor].

“Hey, why did they change this to the 7th floor? It’s confusing.”

“They said the sound of ‘4th floor’ was unlucky, so they were told to change it. That’s why everything got pushed up by one floor.”

The mage chuckled at that and asked,

“Suddenly? Who? That old geezer Mobius?”

“Yeah, I know, right? He really should know when to stop.”

The other mage also grinned, revealing his white teeth, and chuckled. And only their white teeth gleamed. The world turned pitch black, and the magical machinery they were diligently operating sparked and broke down. A scream echoed in the pitch-darkness.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Panic in the darkness lasted only a moment before, without anyone taking the lead, they cast light magic and rushed towards the direction of the scream. There, a man was sobbing, clutching a shattered magic tool tightly in his hand.

“W-what is it?”

“What happened?”

As the mages murmured amongst themselves, someone recognized the sobbing man’s face and said,

“Whoa! This guy, isn’t he the one who received research assignments directly from Mage Seamus and was preparing for the magic tower promotion exam?”

“My, my promotion exam assignment…! I prepared it for th-three years…! Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Ahhhhhhh!”

The man’s miserable cries pained even their hearts. And in the places untouched by light, people whose graduation projects and years of research assignments lay shattered were collapsing, screaming silently. On the white door, faintly illuminated by the light magic, was written in the mages’ script:

[Power Room]