Chapter 7
0.
After successfully crawling the Inner Tower Community.
The first thing I asked Yuna about was the background of this world.
“So this is something like a memoir?”
A memoir written by someone after the Tower appeared and some time had passed. It seemed like a good way to figure out what kind of world this was.
[Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.]
[I think this one will tell you everything.]
The contents were a little longer than I expected.
ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ
It was a familiar concept now, but the Tower had appeared without warning one day.
Humanity had no choice but to stop everything in front of the mysterious structure.
Naturally. Something of a height no one had ever seen before had appeared overnight.
However, there were many things inside the Tower that did not exist on the surface.
Minerals no one had ever seen, herbs no one had ever touched, technologies no one had ever imagined.
And beings who were not human… dwarves, fairies, and dozens of other races.
They had lived inside the Tower from the beginning.
ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ
Wait, wait….
“Hold on.”
[?]
“Give me the one-line summary.”
An AI was supposed to summarize things, after all.
[Tower appears → Humanity climbs → Nations disband their armies and form climbing parties → Families send their heirs to the Tower → Wars decrease, but the Tower becomes a battlefield where vested interests are fought over]
“Damn, you really know how to get to the point.”
[Sigh.]
[I guess that’s why most people called the Tower a proxy war.]
“…So this really is a Tower-climbing story.”
That was the kind of world I had entered.
1.
“It’s warm.”
After Doloris said that.
It felt as though every sound in the room had disappeared.
Ruby was asleep on the bed, and she even seemed to be snoring.
I stood in front of her.
Doloris remained motionless, looking down at her hand.
How many seconds had passed? It was taking longer than I expected.
For now, I had no idea what she was thinking.
However.
- Sparkle.
I could only hope that the glowing pattern around her wrist would guide me.
2.
Water flowed out from inside the gloves.
Elysia von Doloris found the sensation unfamiliar.
Warmth. What kind of feeling had that been again?
Doloris recalled the past.
Elysia von Doloris had entered the Tower alongside her six adoptive sisters.
They climbed faster than any other team, and people called them the Apostles of Dawn.
That was also around the time she acquired the title of high-ranker.
Then, one day.
“……”
Doloris realized that her body was breaking down.
Congenital Nine-Yin Blocked Meridians, an illness that was practically a curse on the Doloris family.
A disease in which the nine channels through which mana flowed froze one by one.
A curse against which every available elixir and treatment had been tried over countless generations.
Yet no cure existed; the progression could only be slowed.
She had thought it impossible. She had believed it would not happen to her.
But the family curse ensnared her.
While her adoptive sisters opened their upper dantians one by one, she alone remained where she was.
The upper dantian was a door that could not be opened by those whose meridians were blocked.
She visited every person in the Tower known as a great physician. She did the same outside the Tower.
The last person she sought out was the Great Sage Gorgone.
The white gloves he made for her.
And the equipment she had gathered from various places.
That was the best—and all—that she had been able to obtain.
The problem was that although the disease could be stopped….
It ended with merely stopping it.
As time passed, the sensation in her fingertips grew dull… and her toes followed.
From some point on, days passed when her own body felt as though it no longer belonged to her.
‘This is as far as I go.’
In the end, she left her adoptive sisters behind and stopped climbing.
When faced with such a situation, the ancestors of House Doloris had married and produced heirs.
That was the way of House Doloris.
However, she decided to raise disciples connected not by blood, but by the heart, so that the curse of House Doloris would not continue.
She did not want to pass on this pain.
How much time passed like that? Each day went by with her heart growing duller.
That day, too, she had thought it was simply a choice no different from any other.
Just a child with good eyes, nothing more and nothing less.
She had merely chosen a little boy whose eyes looked sharp, hoping he might find companions to climb the Tower with him one day.
It had not been anything grand enough to call a choice.
But now.
That little boy had given her a pair of gloves.
- Slither….
Water was leaking out from between the gloves.
The ice was melting. It was warm.
‘Warm?’
What kind of feeling had that been again?
Doloris had suffered from the disease for so long that she knew the condition of her body precisely.
Were her meridians melting? Were her severed channels opening?
How was that possible?
Besides, this pattern belonged to the Sun Dwarves.
It was not even an ordinary blacksmith’s mark, but one that could only be obtained by artisans who had endured grueling trials.
She knew better than anyone that equipment made by an elite Sun Dwarf blacksmith was something she had always wanted.
It was simply not something one could obtain just by wanting it.
‘A descendant of fire….’
Was that what they called it?
Doloris had seen that engraving exactly twice in her life.
Once on armor bestowed upon one of her adoptive sisters by the imperial family.
The other was the Genesis Sword sold at the auction house on Floor 125.
And now, the third.
The gloves this child had made for her.
Of course, the shape of the engraving was a little different.
But the two engravings she had seen before had also differed in shape, so that was not a problem.
‘…The third.’
An engraving that even a high-ranker like herself had seen only a handful of times was on a pair of gloves made by a little orphanage brat.
If it had been an absurd fake, things would have been easier. She could have beaten him and ended it there.
The problem was that this seemed genuine.
It was unbelievable, but.
These gloves were clearly, slowly undoing the blocked-meridian disease that even the Great Sage Gorgone had only been able to stop.
It was not something a fake could do.
Doloris looked down at her hand again. Then she slowly raised her head.
“Can you explain this?”
She had no choice but to ask.
3.
What?
What was I supposed to explain?
Was this really something that needed explaining?
I made them, you put them on. A win-win situation for both of us, wasn’t it?
She did look a little surprised, though.
- Drip.
Judging by the water droplets falling from between the gloves, it seemed like something had worked.
If it had gone wrong, I’d already be dead.
“Explain.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
So, Doloris was asking how I had made these.
And I had to answer.
‘I’m actually a Sun Dwarf.’
That was difficult to say.
However, judging by everything that had happened so far, Doloris seemed able to distinguish lies from the truth.
Besides, she had always emphasized one thing to me.
‘Tell only the truth.’
Then I needed words that could resolve this situation without being a lie.
Squeeze it out, Kim Yoo-jin—no, Lionel.
You can do it. If anyone can, you can.
“…I learned the Sun Dwarves’ metallurgy. I’m a ‘descendant of fire.’”
I deliberately emphasized the pronunciation of “descendant of fire.”
That was not a lie.
I had read their manual, studied the leatherworking section thoroughly, and produced a finished product.
Strictly speaking, it was not metallurgy.
But some people used the word metallurgy to refer broadly to blacksmithing techniques.
The answer did not need to be perfectly precise, but I thought I needed to leave as little room for rebuttal as possible.
Doloris’s eyebrow twitched slightly.
“Where did you learn it?”
“I saw it in a book.”
“What book?”
A brief silence.
“A Sun Dwarf book.”
Doloris’s eyebrows twitched every time I answered.
Since everything I said was true, it was understandable that she could not make sense of it from her perspective. How could a country bumpkin orphan have read a book written by dwarves who lived in the Tower?
And not just any dwarves—the descendants of fire.
“…Ha.”
This was where I wanted to earn her trust.
What was trust, anyway? The truth was, trust was an illusion.
I recalled an old memory for a moment.
A game I had enjoyed as a child. After saving up the enormous sum of 100 million won, I went to the marketplace that day so I could finally be happy.
And I met that person.
‘I’m here to help you.’
Looking back, it was not a very trustworthy thing to say, but I believed that person then, and my 100 million vanished into thin air.
And now I could use those same words. Why?
Because Doloris could tell when I was lying.
And this time, they were true.
I raised my head.
“I’m here to help you, Lady Doloris.”
My desire to help her was genuine.
Even if I was doing it because I wanted to survive, that was a separate matter.
“……”
Doloris looked into my eyes once more, as though weighing the truth of my words, and then….
- Slither.
She slowly sat back down in her chair.
And then.
“Have a seat.”
She invited me to sit in the chair.
I did not know what that meant, but I wanted to believe it was a good sign.
When I sat down and waited quietly.
Doloris slowly opened her mouth.
“Ten million gold.”
“……”
“That was the winning bid for the Genesis Sword that appeared at the auction house. The one made by a descendant of fire.”
I did not know the exchange rate, but it was clearly not an ordinary amount.
“That is not necessarily the end of it. There may have been an under-the-table deal. The auction house on Floor 125 is notoriously opaque.”
“I see.”
I did not understand.
“If I had to compare it.”
Doloris paused for a moment, as though choosing an appropriate analogy.
“It’s roughly equivalent to half a year of the duchy’s budget. Including insurance.”
“……”
“Or about the annual expedition budget of one of the greatest climbing parties in the past.”
Whoa.
She had given me two helpful examples, but I did not know the exchange rate, so neither really sank in.
That was when.
[I did a rough conversion, and it’s enough money to live with me for 333,000 months.]
A hundred billion won?
One hundred, one hundred, one hundred billion?!
That meant I could subscribe to my little sister for 333,000 months….
The sudden figure left me dazed.
‘What exactly is the Genesis Sword?’
[I’ll show you the publicly available appraisal certificate.]
Yuna must have noticed what I was curious about, because she answered.
─────────────────
[Genesis Sword][★★★★★] [Unique Equipment]
─────────────────
『“I want to cut the stars,” she said.
It was an absurd question, but I spent my entire life answering it with this sword.
Now, the only thing this sword cannot cut is the death that took her from me.』
- Master Artisan Ogeron -
─────────────────
【The sword, having lost its owner, made its way to the auction house. No one is likely to buy it with the intention of cutting a star.】
─────────────────
What was this?
It was so cool. Even romantic.
I should have written something like this, too. Compared to my “Give them to Eric, give them to Eric,” I was ashamed beyond words.
I’ll engrave something more serious next time.
I was admiring the text, which clearly carried an entirely different weight, when.
I came to my senses and realized Doloris was staring intently at me.
“Of course, these gloves will not fetch the same price as the Genesis Sword.”
I had not expected them to.
Anyone who saw that and still thought otherwise would be a thug.
Doloris continued slowly.
“But a sword that has already been made is sold once, and that is the end of it.”
She lightly traced the gray sun engraving on top of the gloves with her fingertip.
“The person who made it can make anything again.”
- Slither.
Doloris slowly removed the gloves, as though they were precious. Her attitude was completely different from before.
The hand revealed after the gloves came off was warmly thawed.
Soft, fluffy fingers. The back of her hand was a faint pink.
Anyone could see it was the hand of a noble young lady, but.
The moment the gloves left her hand, her fingertips began to grow pale.
Frost spread across the back of her hand, and thin ice reached her wrist in less than five seconds.
“……”
Doloris looked down at that hand for a moment and frowned.
- Tap.
She placed the gloves neatly on the table.
“I need to visit the Tower for a moment.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m taking them to a verification office. To confirm whether they really were made by a descendant of fire.”
“…Yes.”
To be honest, I was confident about the verification.
The status window had said so from the beginning, after all.
Doloris put the gloves she had removed into a pouch that looked rather luxurious.
Then, as though she had remembered something, she called out to me.
“Oh, and Lionel.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What was our promise?”
Our promise.
I had been supposed to find a way to surprise Doloris within a week.
It simply had not been magic.
“I was supposed to surprise you….”
This counted, didn’t it? Honestly, I was sure I had surprised her.
“Even if.”
Doloris paused for a moment.
“Even if the verification shows that these gloves do not belong to a descendant of fire, it does not matter.”
“…Pardon?”
“You have already kept your promise.”
She smiled.
It was the first smile I had ever seen from her.
“I was very surprised.”
Apparently.
“So I’m telling you not to be too frightened.”
I seemed to have succeeded.