Chapter 322
Chapter 322: Cloud Tower
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
The new master was now confirmed, and the Three-Colored Tower started gleaming—it became so bright that even those in the nearby streets could see it.
A mystical light baptized the entire mage tower, including the observation deck, divination room, library, mystical garden, magical puppet warehouse, magic beast research laboratory, magic beast dungeon, summoning room, elemental pool, and servants’ quarters. Along with the light, which illuminated every room, my will spread throughout every corner of this mage tower.
Even though I was using a control panel, I could send my vision to any location I desired in the tower. As long as I willed it, my command would arrive, in an instant, no matter the place.
“An automated analysis has been completed for the seventeen floors of the main tower and the twelve floors of both the secondary towers. Repairs are needed for the third floor of the main tower and the seventh floor of the second secondary tower. All other floors are in excellent condition. The energy batteries have been activated, and the magic puppets will conclude their automated analysis in five minutes. The puppets will then proceed to clean and repair the mage tower. Over ninety percent of the mage tower can be restored to daily usability after three days of maintenance.”
The voice of the mage tower spirit Garden echoed in my ears. Aso was indeed a veteran mage. Despite the long-term hibernation, the Three-Colored tower was in tip-top condition; only minor maintenance was required for it to be up and running again.
The magic puppet warehouse opened and from it trod out massive magic puppets which seemed to possess endless amounts of strength. Never knowing fatigue, these puppets were the best free laborers and cleaners of all. Under my command, the summoning room commenced its operations, calling forth elemental servants that would forever be at my beck and call.
“Master Roland, the library is now in order. Your pet cat is requesting permission to enter. Would you like to grant it to her?”
“No wonder she disappeared in the blink of an eye. I’ve never seen her move so fast, especially when she has to do work. Toss her in the water elemental pool for me. Help her clean her head and wash up before granting her entrance.
As I heard the furious roars of that silly cat through our soul connection, Garden, who was, au fond, the steward of the mage tower, concluded her report. The “Security Captain” Meteor simultaneously finished his inspection of the mage tower as well.
“Long years of disuse coupled with other reasons have caused the defensive magic spells and traps to fall into disrepair. The defensive prowess of the tower is only forty-seven percent of what it was in its prime. A list of the resources required to fix the defenses has been generated, but…”
The Cloud Tower would likely remain safe for quite a while, so I decided to leave that matter aside. More importantly, I had a unique idea about how to utilize this mage tower.
“The Three-Colored Tower’s dual-tower core support system is in superb condition. A plentiful amount of mana is stored within. Would you like to try shooting a load at someone? [1] 1
“No! I’m a good person—I’d never do such a thing! The consequences would be far too dire; I wouldn’t be able to take it.
Although the tower spirit Meteor was joking with me, the strongest function of the Three-Colored Tower—allowing an archmage to cast a tri-elemental forbidden spell—gave me yet another ace up my sleeve.
“Right. Let me give this to the two of you. Make a list of the resources and money required to make it, and once everything’s done, begin conducting the modifications.”
“Isn’t this a design blueprint of a floating Cloud Tower? Hasn’t it been lost in history?”
Yep, in the end, the mage tower design blueprint I chose was the Cloud Tower type. The Mage Country’s Cloud Tower was named exactly after this very type, yet it was only a city while the one I desired could fly among the clouds. Mine was a super mega mage tower that possessed the ability to solidify the water vapor in the air.
It was possible that I might never get to use the defenses of this mage tower in my lifetime, otherwise. Leaving this combat-type Three-Colored Tower in a safe city like Arlo was far too much of a waste. I was certain to have endless troubles in the future so a mobile mage tower was what I wanted the most. With the blueprint for a Cloud Tower, I would be able to gather everything needed to build it eventually even though the resources needed were rare and nigh impossible to obtain. The biggest issue was finding a reliable energy source.
A mage tower permanently floating in the sky, not mentioning entering battle, required a humongous amount of energy. The energy consumption for two straight months of flight and combat would, most obviously, be astronomical.
I had originally racked my brain to solve this problem as I had foreseen it all after deciding to proceed with the Cloud Tower blueprint. I had planned to hire mage job classes, like the Four Elemental Swordcasters, to work for me as human batteries. Fortunately, however, I now had a much more facile solution to my problem.
A Salo Crystal was capable of effortlessly powering up floating cities of over one million in population. A mere Cloud Tower was nothing.
Of course, just a slight glance at the resources and money required to construct the Cloud Tower gave me a headache. And I wasn’t just intending to imitate the technology—I intended to learn and absorb it before modifying the Three-Colored Tower into a Cloud Tower that maintained the advantages of both tower types… Although this sounded like a fantastic dream, it was very well possible since Meteor and Garden hadn’t informed me that they were unable to accomplish such a thing.
“Although it’d be quite difficult, it isn’t impossible.”
“Yeah. After a while, I’ll help you two level up, and I’ll introduce you both to a new friend—007. Once he joins you guys, at the very minimum your knowledge capacities will double. With the accumulated knowledge of two Undead Emperors, you shall no longer be the dual mage tower spirits of the Three-Colored Tower. Instead, you will form the Three Wise Ones System!”
The Cloud Tower required the ability to control the wind element, so it was absolutely necessary to construct an internal wind elemental pool. As a consequence, a new wind-element mage tower spirit would be needed, unless, of course, I removed the water or fire elemental pools and made modifications.
It would be far too much of a waste to leave the mage tower spirit back to gather dust at my home. Even if we forget about the buried memories, the knowledge I obtained over the past three hundredish years in Eich could be added to the mage tower’s magical storage. Yep, while, in theory, the mage tower spirits would obey their new master, I intended to… well, let’s use an analogy from my previous world. Whenever a company received a new CEO, it was common for a new general manager to suddenly appear together with the new boss. It was perfectly understandable for the new boss to bring along a loyal subordinate.
“Three Wise Ones System? Sounds pretty nice. Then that’ll be our future nickname.”
I finally had a nice mage tower, which meant the Great Industrial Party now had a nice research center as well. It would be acceptable to borrow someone else’s laboratory to conduct normal magical research, and it was the same for engineering and alchemy research, too. However, this was only for ordinary mages—it really would be unseemly for a mage with two Emblems of Endless Truth to resort to such a practice. Without a fixed headquarters, we would be a paper company selling shoddy products.
Our reputation, in fact, wasn’t the most important part—the tools necessary to aid the research were far more of concern. Similar to a science laboratory with all its science instruments and implements, a magical research laboratory couldn’t conduct research without relevant magical tools. For example, the magical beast research laboratory could accelerate the rate of any magical beast’s evolution by ten times—and most evolutions were likely to be beneficial, hence making it an appropriate location to breed new, useful species. A summoning room, too, wouldn’t just be suited for dimensional summoning. Many space, control, and contract magical arrays would be etched into its walls to help the occupant mage control whatever they were attempting to summon. Even if that mage successfully summoned a dangerous creature, it would be possible to turn that inferno demon dragon to an inferno cooked lizard within the confines of the walls of the room itself.
The simplest and most basic types of research would experience the largest increases in efficiency. With a simple command, the tower spirit would prepare the experiment table as well as the required tools for your use, and it could bring you additional materials and complete other miscellaneous tasks, too. The tower spirit would record the entire process—and conclusion—of your research, and once it was over it’d even write up a report for you. If, for some reason, your project failed, it would be possible to replay a recording of your experiments. All of this was greatly convenient for shortening the time spent conducting research. Mages would avoid spending a huge chunk of their time over unnecessary details, which, of course, meant that they had time to do even more research projects.
I wanted to continuously develop new products and put them out in Thorn Garden, but this required me to find an appropriate laboratory for those overly energetic engineers and alchemists of mine: a laboratory that was nigh indestructible and explosion-proof! The mage tower met those requirements and would serve as a great research laboratory for those excessively spirited gnome engineers—or should I call it an explosion laboratory? Thorn Garden would no longer have to worry about disgruntled neighbors complaining about “too much noise” or “exploding one day themselves.”
Of course, the time it would take to execute all those modifications I wanted was uncertain. Besides, the number of magical ingredients needed was astronomical, and many were priceless and weren’t on the market. I could only take things a step at a time.
And right now, I had a more important issue on my plate.
“How about it? What did they say?”
The moment I left the Three-Colored Tower, I sent a message to the members of the Truth Symposium about the Salo’s Crystal. I also sent them the images in Meteor’s memory of Aso installing that “Salo’s Crystal Gnome Cannon,” which was singlehandedly capable of destroying the entire city of Arlo in but an instant. Naturally, I revealed the crystal itself as evidence.
My trusty messenger Cohen brought back the archmages’ reactions and responses.
“…Some of them were so enraged they immediately swore vengeance against the undead, but most of them were rather calm. But no normal person would possibly be able to remain calm after learning that their lives could have disappeared at the push of a button, that too at the whims of an undead. It’s strange how ‘calm’ they are. They’re probably just bottling it all inside.”
Note:
[1] TL/N: Double entendre fully intended here.