Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 26

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Climbing the Mythic Tower with a Cheating Administrator (26)
Light already bloomed in Geum Su-ah’s palm, brilliant as the Fragment of Sun.
“Director.”
“Don’t lower your guard. I’d also ask that Kim Mu-saeng step back with us.”
Yun Pyo was the same.
His hair, which had been calmly settled, stood on end and shifted to a pale blue.
Both of them had already sensed that this was no ordinary situation.
If so, the top priority was safe extraction.
Of course, securing Kim Mu-saeng—the one Chairman Geum Byeong-chul wanted to meet—was essential.
“Ah, no, no, it’s fine. First we need to talk a bit.”
But what to do when the very person they were meant to secure stepped forward and said it was fine?
And talking, no less?
“Pardon?”
“Talk. With Mage Maia, you mean?”
“You heard it just now. ‘Waiting,’ ‘Marked One.’ Since they were waiting for me, we should talk first. And ask a favor while we’re at it.”
Watching the two stunned faces, Mu-saeng spoke.
He’d come to the 55 Dungeon for a reason—of course it was to have a conversation.
It might be cordial, or it might be hostile.
If it were cordial, it wouldn’t matter, but the odds of hostility were actually higher, which was why he’d brought these two along as bodyguards.
“That… wait, what?”
“Did you mean that ‘Marked One’ refers to you, Kim Mu-saeng?”
But the two of them were reacting like this.
Mu-saeng laughed—a bright, easy sound—and kept walking.
“You people from Geum are surprisingly good at joking around. Come on, of course! That’s exactly why I came.”
At that brazen response, Geum Su-ah and Yun Pyo were at a loss.
This was unprecedented.
Talking? You could exchange a few words, but extracting useful information was impossible. Normally, anyway.
But now?
An abnormal response had appeared.
And an Awakener who’d barely climbed past the 10th Floor of the tower accepted it with a smile?
‘What exactly is this Marking, anyway?’
Both harbored the same question, but there was nothing they could learn anyway.
The only stance they could take?
“Mage Maia! I’m sorry about destroying the Sanctuary on the 5th Floor! But you don’t have to make the Marking so menacing, do you?”
There was nothing left but to do as Mu-saeng instructed.
Mu-saeng called out.
When no voice answered, Mu-saeng opened his mouth again.
“The Sanctuary was falling apart anyway—it was already useless. But what you really needed was this, isn’t it?”
Then, smooth as silk, he produced something still seeping faint light.
Etched with the same magical circuit patterns carved into the surrounding space.
A Guardian Core.
[…You didn’t destroy it.]
An old man’s voice echoed through the entire passage.
Mu-saeng offered a thin smile and explained.
“The Guardian went wild, so the structure couldn’t be helped, but I’m not the kind of person who destroys someone else’s property without reason. And in the process, I learned something about Mage Maia’s Magitech Engineering.”
The message and reward he’d confirmed when the Hidden Condition of the 5th Floor was satisfied.
It was definitely not a friendly tone.
There was a clear undertone—destroy the Sanctuary, and I’ll have my revenge.
But was that structure actually functioning as a Sanctuary?
Mu-saeng had wondered about this from the moment he read that message.
What kind of Sanctuary had Mage Maia been speaking of?
“This Guardian is special to you, isn’t it?”
The Guardian.
The one hidden in the basement of that shabby, near-ruined house.
If a Sanctuary meant a space where one could rest easily,
then perhaps it wasn’t that decrepit house at all, but this Guardian itself that was connected to it—such was his conclusion.
[Kekekekek, to think you’d react like that. Your judgment of you compared to Joo Ye-rin was right, Kim Mu-saeng.]
Wash let out a slightly prickling sound, but it wasn’t wrong.
When explaining to Wash, Mu-saeng had given his own situation as an example.
The thing most precious. The thing you wish to hide.
If Mu-saeng himself had possessed the strength, he would have wanted to hide Joo Ye-rin in the safest place imaginable—that was the example he’d given, and so Wash had agreed to this gamble as well.
‘All right. So I hand over this Guardian Core… and in exchange, ask him to create a new Guardian. That settles it.’
Whether he used this Guardian Core as-is or didn’t—it hardly mattered.
What Mu-saeng truly needed was a Guardian.
Whether he used this Core or not, the important thing was obtaining the desired result!
Mu-saeng’s lips curled into a grin as his suspicion proved correct.
[Hehehehe! Amusing indeed. And the one beside you as well…. The first one couldn’t hold a conversation with me, but you—you’re different.]
At the sound of Mage Maia’s voice that followed, his smile faltered.
The one beside him?
“Are you talking about… us?” Geum Su-ah murmured.
“The first one?” Yun Pyo added.
Geum Su-ah and Yun Pyo exchanged uncertain glances.
Mu-saeng didn’t answer.
He only sensed something distinctly odd in those words.
‘The first…? No. There’s no way she could know that.’
The Mark of Mage Maia was acquired by fulfilling the Hidden Condition on the 5th Floor.
That brand was almost certainly hostile by nature.
But setting that aside….
‘I was the second to achieve the 5th Floor’s Hidden Condition. But that’s—how could she possibly—’
Could the Mage Maia inside the dungeon actually know this?
Even if one were in the Tower, Monsters and NPCs shouldn’t be able to know something like ‘the order in which Hidden Conditions were achieved’, should they?
It’s an Instance, isn’t it? The Tower and dungeon are Instances—so how?
Mu-saeng’s hair stood on end.
[You have much to wonder about, and I have much to wonder about you as well, Ogre. Second of the Marked Ones. Let us have a proper conversation here, away from the Tower.]
This is not the Tower. It is a dungeon.
Yet it is as good as a replica of the Tower.
Same environment, same structure—only lacking quests….
“Wait, Captain? What does that mean—”
“Does a Monster understand dungeons? Or rather, that—”
Mage Maia understands.
That this is a dungeon. That it is not the Tower.
In other words, she comprehends what form her own existence takes!?
A sound like metal scraping on metal echoed through the chamber——….
“What—!?”
“The floor is moving,” Su-ah breathed.
The Magical Circuits that had glowed blood-red shifted to a soft blue luminescence.
At the same moment, the ground beneath the three of them transformed into a moving walkway and began to shift.
* * *
They passed through several doors.
Each time, Yun Pyo and Geum Su-ah flinched.
They had caught sight of the Guardians posted near each doorway.
Mu-saeng, too, was able to recognize them from the Southeast Asia One-Way Group’s records.
Countless Guardians that had to be breached to defeat Mage Maia.
Their forms and functions varied wildly—so much so that the Thailand One-Way Group’s report had included the observation that it felt like ‘facing every monster encountered on the way to the 55th Floor all at once’.
To pass through and leave them all behind without fighting a single battle was a sensation quite unlike relief.
Tension was the only natural response.
If the figure visible in the distance ahead merely snapped a single finger, all those intact Guardians would come pouring down upon them.
“Maia,” Mu-saeng called out.
Mage Maia.
Yun Pyo and Geum Su-ah said nothing.
Only Mu-saeng was startled by a fact not mentioned in any report.
“So you’re a woman….”
He’d naturally assumed male, but what stood before them was an elderly woman.
The One-Way Group’s report had contained no such detail—how could he have known?
“Now that you mention it, the nickname Maia does suit her rather well, doesn’t it?” Mu-saeng observed.
“What are you saying, Mu-saeng? Mage Maia is—” Su-ah protested, embarrassed on his behalf.
A hearty laugh rang out in response.
It was Mage Maia’s laughter.
[Hehehehe! You divide me by human gender—I who am not human.]
An elderly woman’s form, wearing something like Sports Goggles.
But Mage Maia could not be human.
Above all, that voice was masculine rather than neutral.
By Maia’s own words, worrying over gender would be a foolish judgment indeed.
“Well, yes, even if you’re not actually a grandmother. At any rate, Korea has customs of respecting the elderly, proper order between generations, and all that. I’m just relieved we didn’t destroy something precious to you, but instead protected it. That’s what I mean.”
Of course, Mu-saeng wasn’t actually quibbling over the gender of the “55th Floor boss monster.”
It was an effort to build familiarity, even the smallest shred of goodwill.
Thirteen years as a dungeon porter—all those dealings with difficult clients—had honed in him a particular skill at social navigation, at scraping together even fractional points wherever possible. And right now, that skill was fully activated.
“You show that kind of attitude even after I’ve marked you. Now it’s genuinely fascinating, human.”
“I’m glad it pleases you.”
“Pleases? Khkhkhkh! So that’s it? You’re saying I like you?”
His posture was deferential, yet an unmistakable boldness shone through.
For Geum Su-ah and Yun Pyo, this was their first glimpse of how Mu-saeng conducted himself with tower monsters.
Though of course, they thought this only because they knew Mu-saeng poorly.
This degree of boldness wasn’t bold at all.
“So you wouldn’t refuse if I gave this to you. And moreover, you’d try to offer me some small token of gratitude in return for bringing you something precious, wouldn’t you?”
This degree was truly bold.
From the 5th Floor, Mu-saeng had gathered a Guardian Core, which he now extended with careful reverence.
This was his philosophy—if it could be called that.
What do you want to receive?
‘Give first.’
Then give.
The moment you try to make a transaction, the other side begins to calculate conditions as well.
Give first. Especially to an intelligent being.
One who understood feeling well enough to set aside ‘precious things.’
“I’m… not sure whether I like you or not, but one thing’s certain—you’re a remarkable human. I thought you’d rely on the power of 〈what stands beside you〉, force the issue.”
It was impossible not to waver.
Mu-saeng was certain now.
He’d done enough.
If he just maintained the mood properly, extracting one Guardian would be no problem at all.
“Then—”
“But I cannot grant what you want, human.”
“—Pardon?”
“The me outside the tower cannot harm the me inside the tower, can it?”
The glimmer in Maia’s eyes beyond the goggles shifted in an instant.
At the same moment, the eyes of the humans shifted as well.
“So you understand dungeons after all.”
“But how—? There’s never been a reaction like this, not in the 55 Dungeon, not even on the 55th Floor of the tower.”
Yun Pyo and Geum Su-ah murmured, but Maia gave no response.
He merely observed.
Mu-saeng. Geum Su-ah. Yun Pyo.
And…
[Khkhkhkhet. Clever fellow indeed, Mage. Wrong move bringing him to the 55th Floor.]
Wash.
Mage Maia adjusted his goggles once more and fixed Wash with a hard stare.
“I have lived nineteen hundred and forty-eight years in this planet’s time. Would I not know that much? Whether dungeon or whatever else, it’s not the name that matters—it’s that a name exists. The 55th Floor? The very concept of ‘floor’ is the same. What matters is…”
Then he muttered.
“Seven thousand six hundred and forty-five times… Neither dying though I die, nor living though I live. This endless, repeating wheel of eternity—that’s what matters, is it not?”
Every tower is individualized.
Dungeons too—granted only twenty minutes’ leeway—operate the same way.
Even if someone challenges Maia and kills him.
If the next challenger arrives, Maia exists.
Even if Maia turns back a challenger.
When a new challenger comes, Maia faces him again.
Completely from the beginning.
As though nothing came before.
It must be so.
“I cannot know. What is the tower?”
But what if he held all those memories nonetheless?
Maia asked.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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