WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 64

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I took out a puppet and straightened my posture. I checked myself through the mirror bug and steeled my heart. At the very least, I had to keep my head clear.

Part of me wanted to run. But it was already too late. From the moment I chose to stay here, I could no longer slip away. What excuse could I possibly give while running?

I still did not know exactly what they were after. But considering what kind of place this was, there was one thing I could say for certain.

They wanted me to spend points. An absurd number of points I did not actually have.

That was why the auction was full of items I would find useful. They were things I could not even hope to see on the lower floors. Yesterday, I had nearly bought something several times.

There was only one thing I could do in this situation. Not let the word points leave my mouth. Until I understood exactly what was happening, taking part in the auction would be madness.

The mirror bug rang and brought up a screen. A message from Hwaryeong had arrived, saying she was waiting outside. Then should I head out? I firmed my resolve and opened the door.

"Good morning."

Hwaryeong greeted me. She still looked cheerful. I carefully returned her greeting and looked around.

Quite a few people were moving about. All of them carried powerful magical power. They formed a single current, all heading toward the same place. The auction house.

"Shall we get moving too?"

We joined that flow of people and headed toward a door deep inside the Arcana General Trading Company. Space was distorted around it.

People pressed their gems against it one by one and passed through. I did the same. The door opened the path ahead.

I went inside. It was the same place as yesterday. The lowest room, directly in front of the stage.

I quietly went over and sat down. Yesterday, I had been so focused on the items that I had not even thought to look around. Today, I needed to keep a little more composure.

Soon, magical power began filling the auction house from every direction. The auction would probably start soon. Today's auction would surely run from morning until evening as well.

Just thinking about the schedule made me tired. Hwaryeong naturally held out a cup. A deep fragrance rose from the tea, where several flowers floated in bloom.

"Thank you."

"It's nothing. This is hardly worth thanking me for."

I quietly drank it. My tangled thoughts seemed to clear a little. What had the first auction item been again? I recalled the item list Hwaryeong had given me yesterday.

Right, the Thunder Core. They said it was an essence extracted from a lightning spirit. It would certainly be more than good enough to use as a puppet's heart.

Soon, the auction began. The first item came up. It was a strange stone that gave off deep blue magical power. People began calling out points.

But perhaps because it was the first item, the response was very weak. The bidding stopped at only five hundred thousand points.

If I thought only about the power contained inside it, it was far stronger than the wraith tree brain. Yet the price was only that much.

I remembered yesterday's wraith tree. The price had nearly reached two million. Compared to that, this was extremely cheap. I swallowed lightly.

"Do you not plan to purchase that?"

Hwaryeong asked. When I glanced at her, she smiled softly. But her eyes were calm.

"Yes. It is too expensive."

I said it with a bitter smile. She did not say anything else. The price rose a little more, then it was sold for seven hundred thousand. If it had come up yesterday, I would have bought it without hesitation.

Several more items followed after that. They were not things I needed to care about. While staring at them blankly, I checked my points.

10,302 points.

I had only a little over ten thousand. Yesterday, I had not even been paying attention to that.

I looked at Hwaryeong. She was staring at the stage with slightly sparkling eyes. A fan had been placed there. It seemed to have caught her eye.

"Hwaryeong-ssi, do you have no intention of participating in the auction?"

"Ah, me?"

Hwaryeong answered a little late. She looked slightly flustered, as if she had not expected me to speak to her. That was how focused she had been on the fan.

"Yes. You seemed to like it quite a bit."

"It is too powerful for me to use. And it is expensive too, so there is nothing I can do."

"Are you short on points?"

"Yes. It will probably pass one million points easily."

Hwaryeong let out a faint sigh as she said it. Just as she had said, the fan quickly passed one million. Then it climbed even higher, coming close to two million.

"I see."

I said that and looked around. Since I was in the lowest place, I could not see the people above, but I could clearly feel their surging magical power. Curiosity rose in me, so I asked Hwaryeong.

"The people here, what floor have they usually reached? Everyone's magical power is far from ordinary."

I had heard that they were people who stayed above the city's seventh floor, but that was only the basic condition.

I did not know exactly how skilled they were. At my question, Hwaryeong took her eyes off the stage and thought for a moment. Soon, she spoke.

"Mm, well. They are people undergoing the advanced course, or even the completion course beyond that. I do not know the exact details, though."

"I see."

"Yes. And since this is the upper-floor auction house, there should be people here who have climbed quite high. Where someone stays in the city follows the floor they have reached. Most of them should be above the seventh floor."

Did that mean one had to be at that level to use that fan? And I was sitting among such powerful mages.

The fan was sold to someone I did not know. Hwaryeong watched it go with a disappointed expression. Then the next item came up. Points poured out.

This one also passed one million before being sold. To think I had tried to compete with people like that. Thinking only in terms of a mere five years, a mere seven years. Points I did not have were weightless indeed.

The next item came out. It was something I had found quite interesting while looking through the booklet. It was a heart extracted from a magical beast called the Sword-Scale Tracker.

When I had seen an illusion of what it looked like alive, I had liked it very much. It was a human-sized lizard that supposedly used its tail to cut down prey in a single slash. Because of that, its magical power was said to be extremely sharp and eerie.

What I had mainly tried to make until now were puppets based on sword-wielders. Unlike other mages, they did not have complicated circuits, and the magic they used was very simple as well.

And that heart could become a core that suited such a puppet extremely well. Holding back the urge to spend points right away, I half-closed my eyes. If I kept looking, I was sure I would only want it more.

"As expected, you are not buying it."

Hwaryeong asked. I gave the same answer as before. I could feel her looking at me slowly. After a brief silence, she spoke.

"Come to think of it, how many years has it been since Evron-nim came to the university?"

"It has been four years now."

"Only that long? And yet your caution makes it seem like you have been here for decades. It is a good attitude."

I gave a bitter smile. A good attitude. She was giving me a small hint.

But I was still lacking. If I had truly been that cautious, I would have sensed something suspicious about this auction house and never come at all.

The auction continued like that. At some point, I stopped looking at the stage entirely. I simply looked at Hwaryeong and carried on a little small talk.

She said it had been forty years since she came to the university. During that time, she had climbed to the fourth floor. That was very impressive talent. As we talked, time passed surprisingly quickly.

The Ouroboros larva passed by in the middle of that conversation. But its price was quite unexpected. It sold for only six million points.

That was lower than I had expected. Out of curiosity, I asked Hwaryeong about it. She answered simply. Defective goods were cheap no matter what traits they had.

I could only smack my lips at that. Six million points. I could gather that in thirteen years. Assuming nothing went wrong.

"Now, shall we get up?"

Hwaryeong said. Before I knew it, the auction had ended. She led me along the same path as yesterday, to the door where the lodging was.

Hwaryeong stood there quietly, waiting for me to go inside. I spoke to her.

"May I look around the city for a while? This is my first time coming to the upper floors."

"Of course. Shall I go with you? I can guide you."

"No, how could I ask that of someone busy? I will look around alone."

"I see. I hope you enjoy the sights."

Hwaryeong smiled and left. I watched her back for a moment, then moved as well. I headed toward the exit of this enormous building.

When I left the building, the city's scenery came into view all at once. Quite a few people were moving across the bridges. All of them were powerful mages suited to the upper floors.

And below them, I could see countless bridges stacked in layers. Those were full of people as well. I slowly examined them.

My brow furrowed. I had wondered if it might be the case, and as expected, no one was carrying one. Even after I waited for quite some time, it was the same. People only flowed past.

There was no reason to stay here any longer. Then where should I go?

I slowly started walking. Thinking about it, there was a place I had wanted to visit if I ever came to the upper floors. I needed to go there and organize my thoughts.

I was not worried about getting lost. The structure of the roads was almost the same as on the lowest floor. The buildings hung down from the ceiling. Even if the floor was different, the locations were the same.

The place I arrived at was a building giving off bright light. A sign that read [Arcana General Tavern] welcomed me. A menu board set up outside listed all sorts of alcohol and food.

Whenever I occasionally came to the city, I would stop by the tavern like this. It was a good place to sort out my thoughts.

It was the same now. I needed to clean out the mind that had been stained by all sorts of thoughts. When I opened the door and entered, an atmosphere completely different from the tavern below greeted me.

First, a soft light settled over my body. Strangely sparkling particles seemed to float through the air. They were grains of light sprinkled from the crystal sphere on the ceiling.

That light formed a path before me. As I slowly followed it, a table appeared. It was a clean table with a small candle burning on it.

When I sat down, space distorted slightly, making me feel as though I had been quietly isolated. It seemed designed so that one could focus on conversation and food while cut off from the outside.

I began looking through the menu prepared on the table. I had glanced at it outside, but I still needed to choose carefully. The prices were enormous.

In the end, I had no choice but to order the cheapest thing on it. It was a liquor named Starlight Mist. One glass cost a thousand points.

Buying it made one-tenth of the points I had disappear. After paying points like this, I began to properly feel just how unrealistic it had been to talk about one million points.

While waiting for the liquor to arrive, I slowly focused my mind inside my chest. My tree was absorbing magical power through the shadow tree. I cut that off for a moment and poured my will fully into the shadow tree's domain.

Then several lights began to appear, lights that could not be detected through magical power and were connected entirely to me. Countless numbers revealed themselves like that. They were the mirror bugs I had delivered to Miryeong until now.

They were maintaining a very sturdy connection with one another. But it did not flow naturally. That connection was being forced into place, leaving deep wounds in their bodies.

They shone very faintly, so unstable they looked as if they might go out at any moment. Within that connection, they existed only as terminals that temporarily held information.

When I first came to the city, I had felt their presence like this. But I had not thought to examine them in such detail. I had simply assumed everything was flowing normally.

I traced their locations. Then I smiled bitterly.

As expected, I knew something felt strange.

The liquor I ordered arrived on a flow of magical power. I stared quietly at it as it settled onto the table. What gathered inside was not liquid, but something like flowing smoke.

The smoke contained in the glass was a clear silver, and just as the name suggested, it held a fine sparkle like condensed starlight.

I lifted the glass and carefully swallowed a sip. It flowed gently and spread lightly through my mouth like mist.

The taste was quite strange. A bitter yet soft flavor wrapped around the tip of my tongue, then vanished, leaving a sharp aftertaste behind.

And that mist seeped straight into my head. A coolness spread deep into my forehead, and the knots of tangled thoughts began to loosen one by one.

Along with that, the situation that had seemed so complicated began to feel extremely simple.

Seven months had passed since I handed over the mirror bugs. I had already made seven hundred of them. It was a small number if you called it small, but in some ways, it was also a very large number.

But no one in this city was carrying a mirror bug.

I could not find them on the upper floors or the lower floors. During all this time, I had not heard about them from the students who came and went from the city either.

It was very strange. If it were me, I would have advertised heavily and tried to sell mirror bugs for a high price. Just like I had done in the tower.

Until now, I had not noticed because I had not come to the city. After all, all I needed to do was supply them with mirror bugs. But for things to be this quiet?

So I checked the puppets' locations. They were scattered across several buildings in the city. All of them were places owned by the Arcana General Trading Company.

I could not find them anywhere else. Come to think of it, I had seen someone using a mirror bug. It was Hwaryeong. And she was also someone from the trading company.

If so, the premise I had built everything on might have been wrong.

I had thought they were taking my mirror bugs to build a massive communication network inside the university. The points they could earn through that would be enormous, after all.

But had Miryeong ever actually said that? I carefully retraced my memories. No. He had only spoken about one hundred a month.

There had been no clear timeframe, and no firm goal either. I had simply believed it myself. Because that was what I would have done.

But what if their goal was not that? I swallowed another sip of the liquor.

That was why they had tried to make me take on debt.

What would happen if Miryeong declared the transaction over while I owed millions of points?

Of course, I would be able to regain what I had lost. Since I would no longer need to make mirror bugs, my growth would continue steadily, and someday I might even be able to create a communication network.

But that someday would surely collapse before a mountain of debt.

I calculated the points I was currently earning. Three thousand points a month. That was after excluding the points I had to pay every month. On top of that, the lecture would end soon.

Even if I opened a new lecture, I could not guarantee they would use my mirror bugs. That was an uncertain future, after all.

If they pressured the students, then there would be no way for me to earn enough points.

This entire process began with me borrowing points from them. Since that would be my choice, Professor Irian would not be able to intervene easily either.

At that moment, I realized it. They had no intention of maintaining a communication network across the entire university. I could roughly guess why. Unlike me, points were only a secondary concern to them.

Then what would happen if I did not take on debt like now? I smiled bitterly. This had its own problems too.

Still, because I had realized their goal, I had found a slim chance. I threw the rest of the liquor into my mouth. I had to go back quickly.

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