WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 23

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"Now, this is my tower."

Professor Irian spread her arms as she spoke. The tower stood on the peak of some mountain. I did not even know exactly where we were. I had simply flown here while clinging to the Professor's hand.

The moment I first stepped onto the mountaintop, I could not hide my shock. The magical power I felt from the mountain was immense. And all of that magical power was flowing toward this tower.

I watched the Professor's expression and clapped.

"What an incredible tower. The magical power here is remarkable."

Then I kept offering every compliment I could think of. Not so much that it sounded excessive, but enough to put her in a good mood. With that steady stream of praise, her shoulders lifted slightly.

To be honest, though, I was a little disappointed.

The tower was enormous, but it was terribly shabby. Dust filled the area, and cobwebs were tangled everywhere. It gave off the strong impression of a place abandoned long ago.

"When was the last time you visited this place...?"

I asked carefully. She crossed her arms and thought for a moment, then answered in an indifferent voice.

"The last time I came was a hundred years ago, I think. I suppose it has been a while."

She used magical power to rise into the air. Then, in an instant, she flew all the way to the top of the tower. As I stared blankly after her, her voice came down from above.

"I have things to take care of, so I will go up first. You clean the inside of the tower thoroughly as you come up."

Just like that, the Professor disappeared. I let out a sigh. I did not even have the energy to say anything. Hadn't I known things would turn out like this?

What I needed to do right now was carry out the Professor's order perfectly. I looked up at the tower. So I had to go all the way up there. I did not even know whether I could finish today.

I approached the tower and touched the door. The door showed no reaction at all. When I injected magical power and examined it, all the magic built into it had lost its magical power and broken down.

I lightly repaired the structure and injected magical power into the spells. Some of the magic had broken, but the core that formed the door was still intact. The door absorbed the magical power and gradually began to open with a metallic groan.

I took out a large number of puppets and sent them inside first. Only after I used them to roughly examine the area and decided it was safe did I step inside myself. The space was silent and untouched, and dust had piled thickly on the floor, as if proving no one had passed through for a long time.

First, I examined the door I had entered through.

The door looked even worse from the inside. All the magic engraved here and there had broken and lost its function, and even the magical power I had just injected was scattering into the air. It looked as if hundreds of years had passed since anyone maintained it.

I slowly advanced inside. From the entrance, the puppets moved quickly and began cleaning. They sucked in dust, wiped the walls, and pressed forward.

I walked slowly behind them. Like that, I headed toward the wide hall visible from the entrance.

The many decorations placed along the way were either covered in dust or broken, making their original shapes impossible to recognize. The puppets tried to restore them as much as possible, but most had completely collapsed on the inside too, so I decided to discard them all.

When I entered the hall, a wide space opened before me. There was nothing special. Only scattered remains that seemed to have once been chairs or tables were left here and there. Other than that, it was completely empty.

From the center, I could easily grasp the structure of the first floor. It was quite simple. Twelve paths extended out from the hall, and in the direction opposite the entrance, there was a staircase leading to the second floor.

The remaining ten paths each led to rooms. I slowly checked them one by one. I could not tell what they had been used for. Still, judging by the faint traces of furniture left behind, the first floor seemed to have been a space for welcoming visitors, with lounges and other facilities.

The puppets continued cleaning. They gathered useless objects, broke them down, and burned them. They also used various magic to purify the air and magical power, stripping away the old grime.

Even with hundreds of puppets moving in perfect order like this, the cleaning was very slow. No, rather than slow, the first floor was simply too large. The central hall alone was big enough to fit three of my turtles.

The interior felt far more expanded than it had looked from outside. It was probably thanks to magic. I could sense part of the flow of space I had learned while mastering miniaturization magic, but that higher-dimensional, metaphysical flow was moving somewhere I could not understand at all.

As I continued cleaning like this, I found a few things.

Most were useless, but the stone monument in front of the staircase leading to the second floor was quite useful. Most of the letters had been erased, so I could not confirm much, but at least I could tell how many floors this tower had.

There were ten floors in all.

"At this speed, it will be hard to finish today."

Cleaning the first floor took about three hours. There had been nothing much there, but it was far too large.

Next was the second floor. I looked at the staircase. I sent the puppets up first to check above. Through the puppets' eyes, I saw that it had a structure similar to the first floor. The one unusual point was that the central hall had two levels.

I slowly climbed the stairs as well. I held my turtle tightly in both hands.

If something jumped out, I planned to shove it forward like a shield. That was possible because of the incredible density of magical power around me. Maintaining miniaturization magic normally consumed a great deal of magical power, but now there was enough magical power surging around me that I could handle it. At this level, I could keep it miniaturized all day.

The two-level hall was covered in dust, making its form impossible to recognize, and the sculptures and paintings that had decorated the walls were the same. The only things that had kept any shape were a few chairs and tables made of stone.

The puppets cleaned this hall in no time. Through trial and error on the first floor, they had learned a very efficient way to clean. With a thorough division of labor, they connected every part of the cleaning process smoothly.

Standing on the second level of the hall, I looked around. There were ten rooms in total, counting both the upper and lower levels.

But going inside them felt unpleasant. Unlike the first floor, strange magical power was overflowing from within.

So I sent one puppet into the room that looked the most intact. Thankfully, the puppet began examining the room without any problems.

The room was extremely spacious. Around a platform in the center, desks and chairs were arranged in tiered semicircles. I had seen this kind of structure before. This seemed to be a lecture room. The magic here still seemed to be maintained, and nothing was wrong.

Just then, a puppet cleaning the second-floor hall sent a signal. It was a notification that it had found something unusual. When I moved my mind to that puppet, I saw a signpost.

The names of each room were written faintly on the signpost. Almost all of them had been erased and were hard to read, but I could still make out a few. The room I had entered was named Theoretical Lecture Room.

Following that signpost, I decided to explore the rooms whose names I could still read first. One was named Reading Room. A puppet entered the room. The magic here seemed to have broken, and dust had piled up heavily. Old wooden fragments lay scattered in the dust.

The other puppets followed it inside. They cleared away all those unidentified remains, wiped everything clean, and turned the room into a completely empty space.

What should I do about the next rooms? I could not read the names of the rest on the signpost. On top of that, all of them gave off strange magical power, so I could not tell which were safe.

At times like this, I just had to try them all.

With that thought, I scattered puppets into every room. After all, I was not the one going in. One always had to prepare thoroughly for danger.

Then five puppets disappeared.

What?

Flustered, I sent more puppets in, but they vanished again. Every room on the second level of the hall was like that.

The puppets that entered the rooms on the lower level were safe, but like the room I had checked earlier, all the magic had broken and they were a mess. I left the rooms where puppets had gone missing alone for now and began cleaning the lower-level rooms first.

In the meantime, I began thinking about the rooms where the puppets had disappeared. Those rooms were spewing out a great deal of ominous magical power. It was magical power that felt somehow familiar.

Since I had been ordered to clean, I had to do my best. A hurdle like this could not make me give up. If one was not enough, I could send two. If that still did not work, I could send three.

Prepared to pour in every puppet I had, I threw a large number of puppets into the rooms. Some disappeared the moment they entered, and some vanished after leaving only tiny fragments of traces behind. I gathered those traces, piece by piece.

At the end of that, I was able to figure out what the rooms looked like. This was after using up around a hundred puppets. In those rooms, space had been torn open, revealing gaps. The puppets had clearly fallen into them and disappeared.

A chill ran down my spine. It was similar to the gaps in space the Professor often used. No wonder it had felt familiar. That was what was tearing the rooms to pieces. Some part of the magic must have gone wrong and twisted space.

I could not go into a dangerous place like that. I set up a warning sign so no one would enter. In truth, it was meant for the Professor to see.

'Caution: Space is torn.'

I did not have the ability to fix that. So cleaning was impossible too. I had also gained a reasonable excuse, so it would be fine to skip this place. This was something I would have to tell the Professor about later.

That was how I finished cleaning the second floor. Some parts were a little lacking, but I had done everything I could. Perhaps because the puppets had become more skilled at cleaning, they finished faster than on the first floor.

Now I had to go up to the third floor. If it was already like this from the second floor, what would the third floor be like? Tense, I sent puppets up.

Surprisingly, the third floor was intact.

The third floor was filled with an enormous number of bookshelves. I went up as well. The scent of wood tickled my nose. It was a library. Bookshelves rose high into the air, forming a kind of staircase. On top of those bookshelves were tables and chairs.

All of this was perfectly preserved by magic. It was so clean and tidy that there was nothing for me to touch. The magical power flowing through the library cleared my head. If I studied here, the efficiency would definitely be incredible.

This space was so wide that it could not be compared to the first or second floor. At the end of the mountain made by the bookshelves, I saw the staircase leading to the fourth floor. Curious, I approached the bookshelves. But I could only be disappointed.

All of these bookshelves were empty. Even as I climbed and examined them, every one presented the same sorry sight of holding nothing at all. I could only smack my lips and climb toward the fourth floor.

Then, when I reached the summit of the mountain of bookshelves, I found a shelf with a few books placed in it. They were very old, worn books. I pulled one out and examined it.

"This is."

My eyes wavered.

There was nothing written on the cover. And that luxurious quality. It was a format I had seen somewhere before. I carefully opened it. As expected, it was a magic book with a feeling similar to the attendant magic the Professor had given me.

This magic book contained information on fire magic. Though it was not a field I was familiar with, so I could not understand it properly, I could tell just by looking at the magic circles that these were excellent spells.

I quickly took out the other books and examined them. They were all similar. Of course, since the authors all seemed to be different, their formats and appearances differed slightly, but the level of the magic they contained was roughly the same. They seemed to be books the Professor had collected. They were incredible treasures.

I wanted to read more, but I had to continue cleaning first. Suppressing the desire to take the books with me, I sent puppets toward the staircase leading to the fourth floor.

The fourth floor had a structure very similar to the first floor. However, each room was filled with a great deal of magical power. Had they been used as workshops or research rooms? There was nothing left, so I could not tell.

I cleaned them carefully. Since I had become as used to cleaning as I could possibly be, I was able to finish quickly. I headed to the fifth floor.

The fifth floor. This was a dormitory. I could tell as soon as I came up. The structure of the rooms, the objects left behind, all of it. Since magic still remained, shabby as it was, I could confirm the traces.

The most unusual magic among the spells placed on the rooms was space magic that naturally changed the size of a room. A magic circle I discovered while investigating various parts of a room contained that magic. I did not know what kind of magic circle it was, so I carefully breathed magical power into it and activated the magic. The room began expanding tremendously.

But perhaps that magic had also weakened, because space twisted midway and a gap opened. I hurriedly pulled magical power out of the magic circle and canceled the magic. Only then did the room return to its original size and the crack stabilize. I should never touch that again. I let out a sigh of relief.

These rooms were connected to a shared living room. I imagined what this place must have looked like when it was still intact. People would have eaten, shared information, and gone on with life in the tower.

I began cleaning. As with that space magic just now, many parts of this place still had magic remaining, so I proceeded carefully.

As expected, it was dangerous.

During the cleaning process, several puppets were sucked into gaps in space. Empty air that had looked completely normal suddenly split open and cut a puppet's body in half. Any room where such a thing happened was sealed immediately.

Through this process, dozens more puppets disappeared. Of the puppets I had brought, only about half remained now. This much loss had occurred while cleaning half the tower. And I still had to climb just as far as I had come.

Now it was time to go to the upper floor.

I swallowed. Above, very ominous magical power was surging.

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