WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Got a Gallery in the Wild ◈
Chapter 172: Eye of the Typhoon (2)
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The Mage Tower of the Iris Kingdom was a place where countless scholars gathered, along with mages from all over the world.
Physics, alchemy, mathematics, engineering, medicine, and more. Scientific fields were directly or indirectly related to magic, so scholars visited often.
The Iris Kingdom had made good use of that to forge close diplomatic ties with countless nations. Thanks to that, even the Empire could not disregard the Kingdom.
These days, the Mage Tower's influence had grown stronger by the day. With the Wizard King Kadir around, even the king had to watch his step.
If something went wrong at the Mage Tower, it was no different from the entire Iris Kingdom being put on alert.
“Say, mage. Do you know how old I am?”
“You're demonkind. Judging by those wrinkles, you must be at least two hundred.”
“Correct. I've seen New Year's morning come 231 times. I survived from the Age of Strife to this era where ball games are all the rage. Do you know what that means?”
“It sounds like you've seen plenty of strange things.”
The blue-skinned demonkind scholar nodded.
Demonkind rivaled elves in longevity.
Their average lifespan was roughly three hundred years. Yet most demonkind died before reaching two hundred.
Before all kinds of ball games became popular, they fought constantly and even started wars between nations.
Even if they did not live out their natural lifespans, they still lived twice as long as humans. Their experience could not be taken lightly.
“That's right. But even after living this long, I've never seen anything like that.”
“Not just you. Everyone looking at it is probably thinking the same thing.”
“I suppose so. Then let me ask you one thing.”
The demonkind scholar jerked their chin toward something in the distance.
There, floating in the sky, was the Mage Tower.
It was not just the Mage Tower that had risen. The ground itself had been ripped free and lifted with it.
It looked like a farmer pulling up a radish and bringing up the entire clump of dirt with it.
“What in the world do you think that is?”
The Mage Tower, the symbol of the Iris Kingdom and what some called its true core, was floating in the sky.
Most of the mages and scholars inside had hurriedly evacuated after the sudden incident.
The one fortunate thing was that the Mage Tower had stopped in midair instead of soaring endlessly toward the sky.
Of course, it was still high enough that people had to crane their necks to see it.
Just imagining what would happen if it fell was terrifying.
“Is there no one who can explain what happened?”
Some mages still remained in the Mage Tower.
They were the people in charge, each responsible for vital duties.
They had originally planned to hold a meeting about the Sky Whale, but circumstances had changed.
They needed to decide how to handle this unexpected crisis.
“If anyone conducted an unauthorized experiment in the Mage Tower, speak up.”
“You think this happened because of an unauthorized experiment?”
“Then what? Do you believe this was a natural disaster?”
No one argued with the elder's point. It was reasonable.
Mana and magic existed in this world, but common sense still existed as well.
Earthquakes, volcanoes, typhoons, lightning, and so on. Those were called natural disasters.
In the past, some disasters had been thought to be the wrath of the gods, but as science developed, most had been revealed as natural phenomena.
What was happening to the Mage Tower now, though, was far removed from anything natural.
“Even if it was caused artificially, we must find out why.”
“That's right. If we can understand even a little, we'll find a way forward.”
“If anything comes to mind, no matter how minor, speak up.”
The meeting to resolve the crisis began.
But no proper solution or explanation emerged.
The Mage Tower was where the brightest minds in the world gathered, but this situation went beyond all common sense.
One person in particular watched the proceedings in silence.
“Hmm...”
Kadir sat in the middle, neither in the seat of honor nor near the front. He stroked his beard as he thought.
Though he had stepped down as overall director, he was still the most influential person there.
The fact that someone like him was saying nothing meant he had something on his mind. The director seated in the seat of honor addressed him.
“What do you think, Sir Kadir?”
“I find it interesting. At the same time, I find it frightening.”
Interesting, yet frightening.
Everyone wondered what he meant, and Kadir continued.
“Judging by the Mage Tower's current appearance... it resembles a Floating Castle.”
“A Floating Castle?”
“The castle Lord Aragon favored most.”
“But that is only a legend. Even if ruins believed to belong to a Floating Castle have been discovered, there has never been proof that the castle itself rose into the sky...”
“Looking at the Mage Tower flying into the sky right now, doesn't it seem less like a legend?”
Kadir was right.
There was already a mountain of things to discuss about the Sky Whale, and now they had inadvertently confirmed that Floating Castles truly existed.
It was good that there was suddenly a mountain of new research subjects, but that could wait until after they resolved the current crisis.
“Then what do you believe is causing this?”
“Hmm...”
Kadir gently stroked his beard as he sank into thought.
Everyone waited for him to speak.
They believed that Kadir, the wisest mage in the world, would surely know the reason.
‘...What am I supposed to make up?’
And just as they thought, Kadir knew the cause of the crisis.
He knew it far too well.
The moment he realized the Mage Tower was rising into the sky, he had rushed to his laboratory and seen it clearly.
The golden stone shining brilliantly within a translucent enclosure. The Sky Whale's Ambergris.
He had somehow managed to control the Ambergris, which was why the Mage Tower had not continued rising forever.
No, honestly, he was not even sure whether he had controlled it.
Could a modern human mage truly control an artifact from the Mythic Age?
‘At least no one knows this phenomenon is caused by the Ambergris.’
Only Kadir knew the cause.
Ambergris had been mentioned a few times, but the idea had been dismissed.
He was not even sure whether it was appropriate to mention the Gallery during such a serious crisis. And even if it was an artifact from the Mythic Age, it was hard to believe that whale shit could cause something like this.
‘More than anything, I can't let anyone find out that I'm Allfather.’
His username might be exposed if he made a mistake.
It was fine to reveal it proudly in the Gallery. Nobody believed him anyway.
Reality was different. If the identity behind his registered username was exposed, his life would become troublesome.
Was it because he was embarrassed by his private life? Absolutely not.
‘I can't throw away my chance to research things on my own.’
All the rare research materials he could receive from Grylls.
The thought of having to share those materials with others disgusted him.
His hunger for knowledge, rediscovered late in life, made Kadir keep his mouth shut.
The Ambergris alone was worth years, no, decades of research.
After thinking it over and over, Kadir decided to focus on resolving this crisis first.
“Even after living so long, I do not know the exact cause either. But as the director said, this is far from natural.”
“Then you also believe this was caused by someone's unauthorized experiment.”
“Something like that.”
“Even if it was an experiment, it would take an enormous amount of mana to lift the entire Mage Tower...”
“Do we even have an energy source that large in the Mage Tower?”
“If we consider the Mage Tower itself an energy source... would it not be quite enormous?”
It had been caused by someone's unauthorized experiment.
There had to be an energy source capable of making the Mage Tower float in the sky.
As expected of a place where brilliant minds gathered, progress slowly began to be made.
The more progress they made, the drier Kadir's throat became. This could end in the worst possible way.
Not only the Ambergris, but the Undying King stored in his refrigerator could be discovered.
‘I have to get myself off the list of suspects somehow.’
After the first meeting ended, Kadir returned to his laboratory.
The first thing he saw was the brilliantly shining Ambergris.
Why had it activated? What principle had made the Mage Tower float?
The problem was that it was an artifact from the Mythic Age, so he could not handle it carelessly.
What if he touched it wrong and the Mage Tower went into a vertical free fall?
‘Wait. I need to calculate this too. How high has the Mage Tower risen?’
Kadir began writing equations on the blackboard.
He calculated the altitude of the floating Mage Tower and the impact if it fell.
The Mage Tower was an institution filled with all kinds of experimental equipment and energy sources.
‘If the Mage Tower falls like this...’
The damage would be comparable to a meteor impact. That was the conclusion.
On top of that, the Mage Tower stood in the capital of the Iris Kingdom.
If it fell, the Iris capital would be destroyed in an instant, and the Iris Kingdom would be wiped out.
It would almost be better to be hit by a Meteor Storm, the spell famous for annihilation.
At least a Meteor Storm could be defended against. This could not.
‘...Oh, Aragon.’
Allfather froze like a stone statue as he looked at the equations he had calculated.
The numbers varied slightly every time, but the answer was always similar.
If the Mage Tower fell like this, the capital of the Iris Kingdom would at the very least be destroyed.
Flash! Flash!
Unaware of Kadir's feelings, the Ambergris continued to shine brilliantly.
Kadir turned away from the blackboard and looked at it.
Ambergris the size of a fist. How long would it last?
The moment that anxiety crossed his mind, the Ambergris changed.
Crack-
Only a tiny amount, a truly tiny amount, crumbled into powder.
Nothing in the world was eternal, and artifacts from the Mythic Age were no exception.
Kadir could only turn pale.
‘...I'm fucked.’
Still, he could not just sit there.
He pulled every book related to the Mythic Age and Sky Whales from the shelves.
There were so many books that they piled up on the floor.
Normally, he would not have tried to study such a broad range of material, but this was too serious for him to be selective.
‘I have to find out. No matter what it takes.’
The best solution would have been to receive more Ambergris from Grylls.
Realistically, though, that would only extend the time left on the bomb.
He had to understand the principle behind it if he wanted to prepare for future disasters.
‘I need to get even a little closer to the knowledge of the gods.’
Kadir had always been a mage far beyond ordinary humans.
But now, for the sake of survival itself, he was stepping into the realm of divine knowledge.
‘Wait. Then what about the Forest of Four Seasons? Grylls has a much larger piece of Ambergris than this.’
Kadir suddenly thought of Grylls.
He had a piece far larger than the one Kadir possessed. Was he really fine?
He had put it in a subspace backpack, but there must have been some kind of change.
Kadir himself had placed his in a translucent container for storage, and this had still happened.
Kadir hurriedly logged into the Gallery.
The Gallery was in chaos, with people calling it the Flying Mage Tower, the Sky Tower, and all sorts of other things.
He searched for Grylls's post, wondering if something similar had happened there.
[Post title] [I Tried Burying Ambergris in the Ground.]
He found a post with an alarming title.
Grylls had buried Ambergris in the ground. It was enough to make someone faint.
But Kadir was desperate enough to cling to any hope, so he entered immediately.
[Post title] Title) I Tried Burying Ambergris in the Ground.
[Author] Wild Grylls
[Post] (Photo of Ambergris buried in the ground)
[Post] I wanted to see what would happen if I buried it, but nothing happened.
[Post] This is just something you leave around for fun, right?
Nothing had happened.
It was maddening for Kadir.
Someone's Mage Tower had risen into the sky and caused utter chaos, while nothing had happened to someone else.
He could not tell whether the Forest of Four Seasons was so absurd that even Ambergris was meaningless there, or whether the opposite was true.
‘T-Then what about AllHailTheSun? Didn't that person receive some too?’
Kadir was not the only one who had received Ambergris. He had heard that AllHailTheSun received some as well.
[Post title] Title) Ah. That Was Fucking Fun
[Author] AllHailTheSun
[Post] (Photo of a messy bed)
[Post] It was the first time for me and my wives, so we all had fun lol
[Post] I'll do it again next time. There's still plenty of Ambergris left.
└ [Allfather]: Did you turn all of it into perfume?
└ [AllHailTheSun]: Why?
└ [Allfather]: Nothing strange happened?
└ [AllHailTheSun]: Nothing happened. Ah, you mean having fun with my wives?
The only answer he got was maddening for an entirely different reason.
Kadir gave up on the Gallery and returned to reality.
‘I have to find out...!’
The tale of a human mage challenging the knowledge of the gods had begun.
* * *
Around the same time, in the Forest of Four Seasons.
“Hey. Just close your eyes and eat it once. I want to know if you can fly after eating it.”
“Get it away from me.”
“I'll give you something tasty if you eat it.”
“Bad man. Really bad man.”
Grylls was conducting an experiment on Kkobong.
Kkobong resisted this horrifying absurdity with an impressive command of language.
While one person desperately pored over books, another was trying to figure it out through simplistic thinking.
“Just endure it once. When you think about it, Fast Sloth ate some too.”
“You bad man. You have a snake's tongue.”
“Where did you learn a saying like that?”
And he did it without any sense of responsibility whatsoever.
Footnotes:
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