Chapter 18

I handed the accommodating guard double the bundle of banknotes and was allowed into the Mage Tower.

“Wooooow~”

The Mage Tower was far larger inside than it appeared from the outside.

At the very center stood a spiral staircase that looked as though it had been carved from ice. The railings were decorated with celestial bodies resembling the sun and moon, making the whole thing look mystical even at a glance.

And there are magic stones decorating every corner of the stairs like ordinary pebbles?

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much it would cost to embed every section of the stairway’s carvings with magic stones of different colors.

Even I, a member of the Robaires family, the richest household in the Jenua Empire, suspected that the total value was astronomical enough that I wouldn’t dare try to calculate it.

For one thing, the staircase itself was enchanted with spells that made the light of stars twinkle and even allowed the heat of the sun to be felt.

If every single carving has its own magic spell on it…… then the unit of measurement would be…… Ah, forget it.

The staircase alone was a work of art capable of making one’s heart skip a beat, but the different themes on each floor were even more delightful to look at.

The first floor, where I was currently standing, was a space for guests. It had been furnished much like a hotel lounge, with comfortable sofas and receptionists stationed throughout.

The representative colors were chocolate and vanilla.

The plants were apparently watered automatically through magic, because they weren’t merely fresh and healthy—they looked vigorous enough to pierce the heavens.

From the second floor onward, however, the place seemed to belong entirely to the mages.

From there, I could see mages constantly bustling about.

There wasn’t a single mage resting.

Even from far away, I could occasionally smell acrid smoke, yet they seemed completely unafraid to keep trying new things despite their repeated failures.

The mages’ eyes sparkled even more brightly than the magic stones embedded in the Mage Tower’s staircase.

Even though they were exhausted, their eyes still shone with an insatiable curiosity for knowledge.

There seemed to be more than a hundred floors like this stretching upward.

I couldn’t say exactly how many there were because I hadn’t counted them.

I craned my neck toward the ceiling, completely absorbed in admiring the beauty of the Mage Tower.

That was when a receptionist who had been watching me approached with a curious tilt of her head.

“Hello. Did you come to the Mage Tower for some business? Who are you here to meet? If you’re lost, I can guide you.”

The female receptionist had her hair neatly tied up into a bun and was both friendly and efficient.

So I gathered up my courage and honestly told her why I’d come.

“I came to meet the current Master of the Mage Tower, Ciel Caneros. I’m not lost. It’s just my first time here, so I was fascinated and wanted to look around a little.”

The receptionist’s expression became extremely complicated.

“……Do you perhaps have an appointment to meet the Master of the Mage Tower privately?”

“No. I just barged in.”

“I’m sorry, but unless you have an appointment, you cannot meet the Master of the Mage Tower. Those are the rules he established, so I ask that you understand.”

The receptionist raised her hand, and several burly men dressed in black approached me.

“Escort this person outside. He entered the Mage Tower without authorization. And bring the guard here as well. We need to discipline him.”

The bespectacled receptionist wasn’t merely rejecting my request.

She was actually trying to throw me out.

I pulled out another handful of banknotes and waved them at the muscular men trying to grab me.

“Do you want these?”

“Our salary from the Mage Tower is higher than that.”

“What about four times as much?”

“Even so, the salary we receive from the Mage Tower is considerably higher.”

Tch.

My capitalist attack had failed.

How much exactly does the Mage Tower pay its security staff?

I’d already had a rough idea from the staircase alone……

But considering how highly mages were regarded in this world, the Mage Tower, the very heart and pinnacle of magic, must have been making an astronomical amount of money.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have remained completely unmoved even after I offered them four times the amount.

The muscular men finally grabbed both my arms and prepared to drag me away.

Seeing me in such a predicament, the Supreme God seemed to panic and began flapping his tiny, palm-sized wings.

-Aiyo, aiyo! At this rate, you’re going to be permanently banned from the Mage Tower! What are we supposed to do? Wasn’t your greatest advantage after reincarnation supposed to be your overflowing wealth?!

……Are you taking a dig at me right now?

-Ah, no. Not at all. I’m just worried that you and Ciel might never meet.

After hearing the Supreme God’s words, I thought for a moment before revealing my identity.

“You’ll regret it if you casually drag me outside and dump me in the street. I’m the son of the Duke of Robaires from the Jenua Empire.”

“……Is that true?”

“If you don’t believe me, use some magic to determine whether I’m lying. Or you can simply check my identification card.”

“……Very well.”

The receptionist didn’t merely inspect my identification card for quite some time.

She even used magic capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood.

Only then did she acknowledge that I really was the young master of the Robaires ducal family.

She sent the muscular security guards away before crossing her arms and looking me up and down.

“Did you run away from home, young master of a prestigious family? Or did you simply come to the Mage Tower out of curiosity?”

“No. I told you. I’m here to meet the Master of the Mage Tower, Ciel.”

“As I said earlier, unless you have a scheduled appointment with the Master of the Mage Tower, it will be difficult to meet him.”

The receptionist adjusted her glasses.

“Besides, the Master of the Mage Tower doesn’t particularly like people in the first place, so even having an appointment is rather pointless.”

“……Why?”

“Because even if you make an appointment, if the Master happens to leave on the scheduled date, then the appointment is worthless. His personality is notoriously awful, so that sort of thing happens all the time.”

What……?

The Ciel I knew was a little tsundere, perhaps, but fundamentally kind. He was even sociable enough to get along well with the people at the Holy See.

What happened to Ciel after I died for him to earn a reputation like that?

I hadn’t even been the one insulted, yet somehow I felt offended on his behalf.

“So please leave now. Even the mages belonging to the Mage Tower have difficulty meeting the Master.”

“No.”

“Pardon?”

“I won’t leave until I meet the Master of the Mage Tower.”

Seeing my firm determination, the receptionist pressed a hand to her forehead as though she were developing a headache.

“Then there’s no choice. We’ll have to forcibly remove you……”

That was when it happened.

“Everyone, get out of the way!”

“A baseball enchanted with an explosive spell has disobeyed its owner’s instructions and is flying around on its own! If you don’t want to lose a body part, evacuate immediately!”

What?

While I was barely processing what I’d just heard, the receptionist and security guards quickly evacuated to a safe location as though this sort of thing happened every day.

Are you kidding me? I’m an unauthorized visitor, so you’re not even going to protect me?!

Amid my disbelief, the Supreme God suddenly shouted in a panic.

-H-Hikan! You! Above you……!

“Huh?”

I looked up.

A bomb-like baseball was hurtling vertically toward me from the ceiling.

“AAAAAH!”

I ran away in terror, but there was no way I could evade a baseball moving that fast.

Just as it was about to hit me in the head—

I’m going to die……!

THUD! BOOM!

“……Huh?”

When I opened my eyes, numerous mages were staring at me with their eyes wide open, chattering excitedly.

“Did you see that? That person bounced the magic right off!”

“Unless he has accumulated an extraordinary level of magic resistance, there’s no way he could have deflected it that perfectly…… This is a perfect research subject!”

“If an ordinary person has that kind of resistance from birth, then he definitely qualifies as a research subject. Perhaps we could ask whether he’d be willing to participate as a test specimen……”

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Seeing the mages collectively lose their minds, I suddenly realized my mistake.

Ah!

Back when I was Hiaquin, I spent five years suffering through hellish training to build up my resistance against demonic magic!

I never even considered that it would carry over into this life.

But perhaps because my soul is the same, my magic resistance seems to be at the same level as it was in my previous life.

I’m only here to tell the heroes that I’m alive. It would be troublesome if other people found out that I’m the Saint……

So I pretended to know nothing.

“Hahaha. I guess I’m some kind of mutant. I didn’t even know about this until now—”

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

Mages wearing every imaginable type of glasses rushed toward me.

Their eyes glittered as they bombarded me with questions.

“If you’re a mutant, does that mean you’ve possessed this level of magic resistance since birth?”

“Was it inherited from your father or mother? Could it be a hereditary trait? Are there any other people around you with unusually high magic resistance?”

“Would you perhaps be willing to participate in one of our new experiments? It has a very close connection to magic resistance!”

The sparkling-eyed mages swarmed around me.

I was surrounded in an instant.

“No, wait…… I told you I’m here to meet the Master of the Mage Tower!”

Damn it.

At this rate, am I ever going to meet Ciel?

Ciel Caneros noticed the commotion inside the Mage Tower from a distance and frowned.

“What is going on over there?”

His secretary hurriedly bowed and answered.

“Apparently, the mages became a little carried away by their curiosity about a new visitor.”

“Why?”

“I heard that the visitor is an ordinary person with abnormally high magic resistance, so they found him fascinating.”

“Tch…… What a nuisance. Make sure it doesn’t reach my ears.”

As Ciel passed by the noisy scene, someone flashed through his mind for the briefest instant.

Hiaquin…….

You worked so hard to increase your magic resistance too.

Ciel suddenly stopped.

No.

How rude.

To dare compare Hiaquin with some ordinary human like that.

Ciel walked out of the Mage Tower without realizing that the person he had desperately been searching for was standing right in front of him.