“Here, this is my tower.”
Professor Irien said, spreading her arms wide.
The tower was at the top of a mountain.
I didn’t even know exactly where we were.
I had just flown here, hanging onto the professor’s hand without any real plan.
When I first set foot on the mountain peak, I couldn’t contain my surprise.
The magical energy in the mountain was enormous.
And all of that magical flow was heading toward this tower.
I glanced at the professor and clapped my hands.
“What an amazing tower, the magical energy is incredible.”
I continued to offer compliments that I could think of, just enough to make her feel good without overdoing it.
After a string of praise, her shoulders subtly shrugged in satisfaction.
But honestly, I was a little disappointed.
The tower was enormous, but it looked very shabby.
The surroundings were filled with dust, and cobwebs were tangled everywhere.
It gave off the atmosphere of a place long abandoned.
“When was the last time you visited here…?” I asked carefully.
She crossed her arms and thought for a moment, then replied in a nonchalant voice.
“It’s been about a hundred years. I haven’t come in a while.”
She used her magic to float into the air.
In an instant, she flew up to the top of the tower.
I stood there staring at her, and her voice echoed from above.
“I have some things to take care of, so I’ll head up first. You should clean the inside of the tower while making your way up.”
With that, she disappeared from sight.
I sighed. I didn’t even have the energy to argue.
‘Didn’t I already expect things to unfold like this?’
Now, what I had to do was follow the professor’s orders and complete them perfectly.
I looked up at the tower.
That meant I had to go all the way to the top.
I wasn’t even sure if I could finish today.
I approached the tower and touched the door.
The door didn’t react at all.
I infused my magic to check, and I found that all the magic mechanisms inside had lost their power and were broken.
I quickly made some adjustments to the structure and infused magic into it.
Though some of the magic was damaged, the core of the door was still intact.
The magically infused door began to creak and slowly open.
I took out several dolls and sent them inside first.
After making sure the area was safe by checking with them, I entered the tower.
The silence inside, without any signs of use, proved that no one had been here for a long time.
Dust had piled up on the floor.
I examined the door I had entered.
From the inside, the door looked even worse.
The magic carved into it was all broken and nonfunctional, and the magic I had just infused was dispersing into the air.
It looked as though it hadn’t been maintained for hundreds of years.
I slowly ventured inside.
From the entrance, the dolls quickly moved to begin cleaning.
They sucked up dust and wiped the walls as they advanced.
I followed behind them slowly, making my way toward the large hall visible from the entrance.
The decorative items placed along the way were either covered in dust or broken beyond recognition.
The dolls tried to restore them as best as they could, but most of them had collapsed beyond repair, so we decided to discard them all.
***
As I entered the hall, a vast space unfolded before my eyes.
There was nothing special about it.
The remains of what seemed to be chairs and tables were scattered here and there, but aside from that, the place was completely empty.
From the center, I could easily assess the layout of the first floor.
It was quite simple.
Around the central hall, twelve pathways branched out, and directly across from the entrance was a staircase leading to the second floor.
The remaining ten pathways led to various rooms.
I slowly checked each room.
They were all rooms for purposes I couldn’t identify.
But, by examining the faint traces of remaining furniture, it seemed like this first floor had been used as a reception area or lounge for visitors.
The dolls continued cleaning.
They gathered and destroyed useless items, burned them, and also used various magic spells to purify the air and cleanse the accumulated filth.
Despite the hundreds of dolls moving in perfect unison, the cleaning was painfully slow.
No, it wasn’t that it was slow—it was that the first floor was simply too vast.
The central hall alone was large enough to fit three of my turtle.
The interior felt much more expansive than it had seemed from the outside.
Probably because of magic.
I could sense some flow of space from the shrinking magic I had learned, but the high-level, metaphysical flow was beyond my understanding.
As I continued the cleaning, I discovered a few items.
Most of them were useless, but there was one item in particular that stood out: a stone tablet in front of the staircase to the second floor.
Most of the text had been erased and was unreadable, but at least I could tell how many floors the tower had.
It had ten floors.
“At this rate, it’ll be hard to finish today.”
It took about three hours to clean the first floor.
There wasn’t much to do, but it was still enormous.
Next was the second floor.
I looked up at the stairs.
I sent the dolls up first to check the area.
From their perspective, the layout was similar to the first floor.
One unique feature, however, was that the central hall was a two-story structure.
I followed the dolls up slowly, clutching the turtle in both hands.
If anything were to pop out, I planned to use these as shields.
Thanks to the overwhelming magical energy around, it was possible.
The magic I had used to maintain the shrinking spell had consumed quite a bit of my original magic, but now, I had enough magical energy to handle it.
I could keep shrinking magic running all day if I wanted.
The two-story hall was covered in dust, making it hard to recognize its original form, and the decorations—sculptures and paintings on the walls—were the same.
The only things that maintained their form were a few stone chairs and tables.
The dolls quickly cleaned the hall.
After the trial and error on the first floor, they had become very efficient at cleaning.
Standing on the second floor of the hall, I looked around.
In total, there were ten rooms on both floors.
But I was hesitant to enter them.
Unlike the first floor, strange magic was flowing out of these rooms.
So, I sent one of the most intact dolls into the most stable-looking room.
Fortunately, the doll didn’t encounter any problems and began inspecting the room.
The room was extremely spacious.
Around the central platform, desks and chairs were arranged in a semi-circle, following a staircase-like structure.
I had seen this kind of arrangement before.
This seemed to be a lecture hall.
The magic seemed to be still functioning here, and there was no sign of anything unusual.
At that moment, a doll cleaning the second-floor hallway sent a signal.
It was an alert that it had discovered something peculiar.
Shifting my consciousness to the doll, I saw a signpost.
The signpost had the names of the rooms written faintly.
Most of the names had been erased and were hard to read, but a few room names were still visible.
The room I had entered was labeled “Theory Lecture Room.”
Deciding to explore the rooms with visible names first, I followed the signpost.
One of the rooms was labeled “Reading Room.” The doll entered the room.
Here, it seemed that the magic had failed, as dust had piled up everywhere.
Among the dust, old wooden pieces were scattered around.
Other dolls followed suit and entered the room.
They cleared all the strange debris and cleaned the room, leaving it completely empty.
What should I do about the next room? I couldn’t make out any names from the signpost.
Moreover, all the rooms exuded a strange magical aura, making it impossible to know which ones were safe.
‘In situations like this, you just have to try everything.’
With that thought, I sent dolls to all the rooms.
After all, I wasn’t entering myself.
Preparation for danger should always be thorough.
Then, five dolls disappeared.
‘What’s going on?’
Panicking, I sent the dolls again, but they vanished once more.
All the rooms on the second floor were like that.
Dolls that entered the rooms on the lower floors were fine, but as in the previously checked rooms, the magic had all broken down, leaving the place in chaos.
For now, I decided to leave the rooms where the dolls had disappeared and started cleaning the rooms on the lower floors.
In the meantime, I began to think about the rooms where the dolls had disappeared.
These rooms were emitting ominous magical energy.
The magic felt oddly familiar.
Since I had been ordered to clean, I had to do my best.
I couldn’t let such a challenge defeat me.
If one doll doesn’t work, I’ll send two.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll send three.
I resolved to send as many dolls as necessary.
Some dolls disappeared as soon as they entered, while others left only a few traces behind before vanishing.
I collected these traces, gathering them little by little.
Finally, after using over a hundred dolls, I was able to uncover the scene in the room.
The rooms were torn apart, revealing gaps.
The dolls must have fallen into those gaps and disappeared.
A chill ran down my spine.
The gaps resembled the ones in the space often used by the professor.
No wonder it felt so familiar.
That was what was tearing the room apart.
Something had gone wrong with the magic, twisting the space.
I couldn’t enter such a dangerous place.
I set up a warning sign so that no one would enter.
[Warning: The space is torn.]
I didn’t have the ability to fix it.
Therefore, cleaning was impossible as well.
Now I had a reasonable excuse, so I could skip this room.
I’d have to tell the professor about it later.
***
With that, I finished cleaning the second floor.
There were still some unfinished parts, but I had done everything I could.
The dolls seemed to be getting more accustomed to the cleaning process, finishing it even faster than the first floor.
Now, it was time to head to the third floor.
If the second floor looked like this, I wondered what the third floor would be like.
With a sense of tension, I sent a doll up.
Surprisingly, the third floor was intact.
The third floor was filled with an enormous number of bookshelves.
I climbed up. The scent of wood tickled my nose. It was a library.
The bookshelves were stacked so high that they formed stairs.
And on top of these bookshelves, there were tables and chairs.
Everything was perfectly preserved under the magic.
There was nothing I needed to touch.
It was that clean and tidy.
The magic flowing through the library cleared my mind.
If I studied here, I was sure my efficiency would increase dramatically.
This space was far larger than the first and second floors.
At the end of the “mountain” created by the bookshelves, I could see stairs leading to the fourth floor.
Curious, I approached the bookshelves.
But I was disappointed.
All the bookshelves were empty.
Even when I looked as I climbed, they were all bare, unremarkable shelves.
I sighed and climbed toward the fourth floor.
When I reached the top of the bookshelf mountain, I found a few shelves with books.
They were very old and worn out.
I pulled one out to examine it.
“This is…”
My eyes wavered.
There was nothing written on the cover.
And the luxurious design—this format felt familiar.
Cautiously, I opened it.
As expected, it was a magic book similar to the one the professor had given me, concerning servant magic.
This magic book contained information on fire magic.
Although it wasn’t my area of expertise, just looking at the magic circles made it clear that these were high-level spells.
I quickly examined the other books.
They were all similar.
Of course, each book had a slightly different format or appearance, depending on the author, but the level of magic they contained was comparable.
These seemed to be books collected by the professor.
They were incredible treasures.
I wanted to read more, but I had to continue cleaning first.
I suppressed my desire to take the books and sent a doll to the stairs leading to the fourth floor.
The fourth floor was structured very similarly to the first floor.
However, each room had an overwhelming amount of magical energy.
Perhaps they were once workshops or laboratories.
Since there was nothing left to identify them, I couldn’t be sure.
I cleaned them carefully.
By now, I was so accustomed to it that I finished quickly.
Then, I moved on to the fifth floor.
***
The fifth floor.
This was the dormitory.
I could tell as soon as I arrived.
The room structure, the leftover items—all showed signs of the place’s original purpose.
There was still some magic lingering faintly, which allowed me to identify it.
The most peculiar magic in the room was a spatial magic that naturally altered the size of the room.
While investigating various parts of the room, I found a magic circle that contained this spell.
Not knowing what it would do, I carefully infused it with magical energy, activating the spell.
Immediately, the room began expanding drastically.
However, it seemed that the magic had weakened, as the space began to twist, and a gap appeared.
In a panic, I quickly drew the magic back, cancelling the spell.
Only then did the room return to its original size, and the gap stabilized.
I vowed not to touch that magic again.
I let out a relieved sigh.
These rooms seemed to lead into a shared living space.
I imagined what it must have been like when everything was intact.
People must have eaten, shared information, and lived here.
I began cleaning.
Just like with the spatial magic, there was still a lot of magic left in the room, so I proceeded carefully.
As expected, it was dangerous.
During the cleaning process, several dolls were sucked into the gaps of space.
The air, which seemed perfectly normal, suddenly cracked open, and one doll’s body was torn in two.
I immediately sealed off the room where this happened.
In the process, dozens of dolls disappeared.
Only about half of the dolls I had brought remained.
To clean half of the tower had resulted in this much loss.
Now I had to go even higher.
It was time to head to the upper floors.
I swallowed nervously.
The magical energy above was filled with ominous power.