I Got Into School For Nothing - 266
I Got Into School For Nothing (266)
Lesson 52. The Tower's Hidden Side - 2
"It's been a truly long wait."
—Though you brought some of it upon yourself.
"I'd prefer you didn't point that out."
Wedged between Aire and Yumina, the morning lecture, which for a long time had felt like a death sentence, somehow ended safely. After lunch, Ban Yuwon, who had also swiftly concluded his daily spar with Dokgo Yeon, cleansed both his body and mind before standing before the Tower.
Indeed.
What he was about to undertake was a Solo Exploration.
He had distinctly planned to do this right at the start of the second semester, yet he couldn't quite grasp how it had ended up being so delayed.
"Right, I'm the world's greatest playboy. Let's just enter the Tower."
—Oh... right, brazenness suits you. Actually, as long as you take good care of that child, I don't care if you date ten women or a hundred.
"If I dated a hundred, even just exchanging a single word with each would take all day."
Exchanging jokes with Cellon, he shook off his tension.
Recalling his last Solo Exploration, he steeled himself to confront even his ancestor should they suddenly appear within, then stepped into the Tower.
The transition was instantaneous.
In an instant, everything around him melted away, guiding Ban Yuwon into a dim room.
There was no exit door, nor was the room a vast space large enough for a battle.
He might be able to fight a single monster, but against a group of more than one or two, he'd find it difficult to even move.
"What is this?"
Cellon, who had transformed into her human form as soon as they entered the Tower, muttered with a frown.
"First, a creation myth, then the Tower of Babel construction site, and now suddenly, a plain room?"
"It hasn't been plain since that point."
At Ban Yuwon's retort, Cellon nodded, agreeing, "That's true." She then extended a hand, creating a magic circle.
It rapidly expanded, covering the entire room, allowing her to barely ascertain the concept of 'Search'.
"There's no living creature at all? What is this? I thought I could finally be of help for once."
"I sincerely hope you'll continue to cherish that admirable sentiment."
"Hmph, I'm merely trying to repay a favor, you know?"
It was a splendid tone, exemplary enough to serve as a model, though he wouldn't call it the standard for anything in particular.
In any case, thanks to Cellon, he had a hint.
That is to say, 'with her abilities,' she couldn't detect any living creatures.
"That means..."
Ban Yuwon narrowed his eyes, observing the concepts of demons, trace amounts of fairies, flesh, life, and souls that surged all around him from the moment he opened his eyes in this place.
"This won't be a combat stage."
"Really...? Isn't this the moment when monsters, ones that have never appeared in the Tower before, should emerge and snarl before your eyes as you seek to uncover the Tower's truth?"
"Have you been watching Earth content lately?"
"Yeah, with Lilyth and Eve."
So these rascals had been secretly increasing their viewership, huh.
Ban Yuwon sighed and found an antique sofa nearby, settling onto it.
The atmosphere oddly resembled Eden, the resting place that appeared every ten rooms, yet it also had a strangely dynamic quality.
Perhaps that was because a flow existed within the concepts pervading the room.
Ban Yuwon half-closed his eyes, watching the flow, then suddenly looked up at the ceiling and let out a chuckle.
Noticing his laughter, Cellon tilted her head and asked him,
"Why did you sit down? Shouldn't you be looking for a way out?"
"No, there's no need to move from here. And no need to fight, either."
"Really? Oof."
Since there was no need for combat, she could have reverted from her human form, yet she sat beside Ban Yuwon without a second thought.
Soon, sensing Ban Yuwon's gaze, she shrugged and replied,
"What? Sometimes I want to live in my human form too."
"If that's what you want."
Even now, she would often appear in her human form when Ban Yuwon was alone in the training room or when Asha was out with Aire, away from their dorm. But was that truly enough for her?
Although the exploration had turned out vastly different from expectations, if Cellon could rest, then this wasn't so bad either.
"That's strange."
"What is?"
Cellon, who had been examining the room's structure, suddenly spoke. Ban Yuwon, responding reflexively, also re-examined the room, as if following her lead.
In the room, neither large nor small, the first thing that caught the eye was the sole source of light.
Inside a fireplace, burning logs crackled and blazed, their slow flicker and the sound of burning wood creating a sense of peace.
The sofa was placed with its back to it, and that was all.
"If this room was created by the Tower, shouldn't it have a purpose? I don't see one. It's as if it's completely empty."
"At least there's a sofa, that's a relief."
"And ever since... it's strange. I didn't pick up anything with my search, but I sense a strange presence. If you've noticed anything, tell me quickly."
"Up."
"I checked with search magic, but there's nothing particularly strange..."
At Ban Yuwon's words, Cellon finally looked up at the ceiling and fell silent, speechless.
If one were to compare it, it was like a black sponge.
It was grotesque enough that round holes were scattered across the ceiling, but upon closer inspection, they were repeatedly contracting and expanding, sucking something in and breathing something out.
"Gyaaaahh—"
Without even time for a full scream, Cellon let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a shriek, clutching tightly onto Ban Yuwon.
Her body, once merely a staff, felt excessively vivid, striking him anew as somewhat surreal. Seeing her, who had generally maintained a relaxed demeanor since her seal was broken, react with such nervousness, he felt a mischievous pride, like a grade-schooler who'd successfully pulled a prank.
"What, what is this, what is this? I didn't feel anything when I searched!"
"Even being too proficient in magic has its drawbacks. If you hadn't relied solely on it and had looked a little more carefully, you would have found it immediately."
"Nothing escapes the influence of my search— Right, I momentarily forgot this was the Tower..."
Utterly deflated, she sighed and pulled away from Ban Yuwon.
"You're going to handle it anyway, right?"
"I told you it's not a battle. Just wait a bit."
"?"
Leaving the bewildered Cellon, Ban Yuwon leisurely began to brew black tea.
Cellon, narrowing her eyes, stared intently at the back of Ban Yuwon's head, as if trying to read his inner thoughts.
He, seemingly aware of her actions without even looking, chuckled and explained,
"I've talked about this with Aire before, but my Solo Explorations are different from others'. Aire called it 'the Tower's Hidden Side'."
"Hmm."
"My previous two explorations also involved combat, but it wasn't really the main point, was it?"
"Both times were incomparably harder than team explorations, though."
"But that combat wasn't the purpose of the exploration."
In the first exploration, the world was created; in the second, the Tower was built.
The past two explorations had focused on showing Ban Yuwon what transpired in the realm of myths and on teaching him.
If Ban Yuwon wasn't mistaken, these were fragments of moments experienced by his ancestor.
Among them, only the things Ban Yuwon absolutely needed to know, or perhaps only the things his ancestor had wished to show him, were extracted and recorded within the Tower.
So, what about the third exploration?
"...Are you saying this might be the interior of the Tower in its early days, soon after it was built?"
"It could be, or it could be the very interior of the current Tower. What's important isn't *when* this is, but *what* I need to learn here."
Pouring out the black tea, Ban Yuwon handed her a teacup and spoke.
While all the Rebellion members were absorbed in hot cocoa, Yumina tended to prefer alcohol, or black tea, and Cellon was no different.
Even as she wondered what good tea would do in their current situation, her inability to resist the fragrance rising from the teacup and her act of accepting it were proof.
"Learn... huh?!"
At that moment, Cellon let out a scream.
From the center of the seemingly empty room, a goblin suddenly appeared.
And it was significantly smaller than those that typically appeared within the Tower.
One, ten, a hundred.
In an instant, thousands, then tens of thousands more spawned, swarming like an ant colony, an utterly repulsive sight.
"Wait, did we get bigger, by any chance?"
"No, it's these guys that are small. They'll return to their original size when they're deployed in the Tower. I can temporarily shrink monsters like goblins anytime I want, after all."
"Then... good heavens, this is a monster's Progenitor's Room."
At Cellon's words, which instantly hit the core truth, Ban Yuwon also nodded in affirmation.
That's right.
This was the space dedicated to creating the monsters that constantly emerged from within the Tower of Babel.
All the flows of concepts Ban Yuwon had observed were the raw materials for creating goblins and other lower-tier monsters.
These concepts took form as goblins in this room, then like that—
"They're being sucked in..."
They were all absorbed through the holes in the ceiling.
The goblins that disappeared like that would then appear in the lower levels of the Tower.
And the residual concepts of the fallen goblins there would be reabsorbed into the Tower, returning here to create new goblins.
'Even if a part of 'Life' is granted as an experience point concept to those who defeat them, most concepts eventually dissipate unless one retrieves all of them, like I do. I'd always wondered where they went, but now the mystery is solved here.'
Ban Yuwon surveyed this Progenitor's Room—this cycle chamber—that constantly retrieved concepts, created new monsters, and sent them back into the Tower, his eyes gleaming with a strange light.
Considering that new students enroll every year, and most climbers experience periodic 'Lost' states, forcing them to climb the Tower from the beginning again, it's highly probable that this place is where the Tower's most active recycling operation takes place.
"The Tower's most...? Aha, there must be more than one Progenitor's Room like this."
"Exactly. I can't guarantee there's a separate space for every monster, but they're probably divided by monster level or elemental composition. The concepts forming a goblin aren't particularly rare or complex. In terms of difficulty, this would be the simplest place."
"Why are you talking about difficulty? ...Ah."
Cellon's intuition was, as expected, quite useful.
From the moment Ban Yuwon said this wasn't a combat area, Cellon had been thinking, 'Then what *is* it for?' and now, witnessing what happened in this Progenitor's Room and recalling Ban Yuwon's words about 'learning,' she immediately found her answer.
"You... said you weren't confident in creating forms from scratch, right?"
"I did. And now it looks like I'll be getting intensive tutoring here."
Ban Yuwon poured tea into his own cup, replied gloomily, and lay back on the sofa.
Seeing his discouraged expression, Cellon hesitated for a moment, then shifted slightly, closing the distance between them. It reminded him so much of Yumina that it made him smile.
"I still don't understand anything, but... you can see how these monsters are created, can't you?"
Indeed, if he could see the flow of concepts but couldn't understand the process from those concepts coalescing to a monster being born, he wouldn't be worthy of being a possessor of the All-Seeing Eye.
This was certainly the form of education Ban Yuwon had yearned for, but...
Even watching it from beginning to end, it was still not that simple.
A sigh escaped him involuntarily.
"It looks like this will take quite a while again."
"I hope you can clear it before the second semester ends. I'll cheer you on."
"If you have nothing to do, whenever your mana refills, put some into my talismans. I've been needing a lot of talismans lately."
"I wondered when you'd finally ask for something like that."
And so, another task was added to Ban Yuwon's already busy daily life.
Fortunately, this 'creation' practice wasn't limited to just the Tower's Hidden Side...
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