"Why are we suddenly coming here?"
Julian extended his hand as he asked.
We were climbing the mountain.
I grabbed his hand and hauled myself up onto the boulder.
"I'm going to open the Mage Tower."
"The Mage Tower?"
Even answering honestly, it was only natural he wouldn't understand.
I wiped the sweat beading on my forehead and elaborated.
"It's a place that can cure my illness."
"Really?"
Julian's eyes went wide.
I placed my hand on the stone tablet embedded in the ground and nodded.
【Insufficient mana to activate the Mage Tower (minimum 3rd Circle required).】
"To do that, I need your help."
"Just say the word. I'll do anything I can."
I sat down in front of the tablet and drew out the mana crystal I'd received from Roa.
"If anyone tries to approach this area, stop them. No one gets through. And don't interfere with me, either. Even if I'm coughing up blood—don't touch me."
That last part was as much a plea as it was an instruction—directed at Julian.
"That's a tall order."
Julian met my eyes, then nodded.
"Understood."
Having a reliable guard was a blessing. This task carried serious risk even for me.
If I failed, I could die.
I cradled the mana crystal gently in both hands.
I released the vast reservoir of mana I'd been harboring.
Eyes closed, I focused entirely on moving the mana.
Drawing power up from my lower abdomen, through my heart, and pouring it into the tablet.
At the same time, a massive volume of impurities poured out alongside it, scraping against my internal organs.
A stabbing pain like a knife forced my left eye shut.
The pain was worse than I'd anticipated.
I had to endure it.
I'd never attempted anything like this in my previous life, either.
I'd only known in theory that it was possible.
My body began to tremble faintly. It felt as if the agony of Mana Reflux had been dialed up to its absolute limit.
Perhaps that was inevitable. This process was about expelling every last drop of mana from my body.
Mana was life itself. I was shaving away my own existence. And the impurities made the pain multiply several times over.
"Gkh—"
Blood reversed course and leaked past my lips. A bitter, metallic taste coated my tongue. I could swear to it:
The most excruciating pain a human being could endure was happening right now.
But there was something greater than the body's pain—and that was the wound in the heart. I called to mind the people who had died for me.
The regret-filled days flickered through my skull in fragments. I clung to those fragments and held my mind together.
'I'm out of mana.'
From this point on, I held my breath and breathed through the mana crystal.
Pure mana, one hundred percent.
Every cell in my body sharpened to vivid clarity, as if each one had come alive.
From the cries of animals and insects to the flow of mana woven through the atmosphere.
The more mana filled my body, the more the brilliantly glowing crystal lost its color.
When at last the crystal had turned into an ordinary rock, I channeled my mana back into the tablet.
CRACKLE—!
Blue script began to surface on the stone. Ancient language.
One line. Two.
By the time the inscriptions had filled the tablet, my body's mana had been drained to the dregs.
"Cough—"
Far more blood than before dripped steadily down my chin.
【99%】
One percent short of a full charge.
Failure?
"Like hell!"
I gripped the tablet with blood-slicked hands.
Blood trickled down and filled the tablet's final inscription.
In the next instant the ground shook, and light like the sun erupted from the stone.
The light unfurled a formula of such staggering caliber that the mere sight of it inspired awe.
A formula beyond anything even my past self had ever cast.
'The formulas here are far more vast and refined than the southern Mage Tower's.'
If the southern tower had been a box of magical research and knowledge, the northern tower was designed around combat and defense—an architecture built for war, massive in scale.
From that magic circle, walls materialized—and the Mage Tower I'd dreamt of stood complete.
At the same time, a blue window filled my vision.
【You have become the Mage Tower Master.】
Lines that hadn't appeared before were included this time.
【Territory Effect: Atmospheric mana concentration increases. Residents' physical capabilities improve. Temperature rises slightly.】
【* Effects scale with the Mage Tower's level.】
***
"Lord Lumio—!"
Julian couldn't believe his eyes.
From the moment Lumio had radiated mana powerful enough to make his skin crawl, to the stone tablet—which he'd assumed was an ordinary relic—erupting with light.
Then the ground had shaken, and a bizarre structure had risen from nowhere.
The building had swallowed Lumio whole, and Julian's patience was reaching its limit.
He'd been told not to interfere—but Lumio hadn't said anything about disappearing from sight.
Julian drew his sword and threw the Mage Tower's door wide open.
"You scared me."
An unexpectedly calm voice greeted him.
Moments ago, Lumio had been vomiting blood, looking like death itself—yet now he wore the most relaxed expression Julian had ever seen.
"Are you alright?"
"Come in."
Julian moved to step inside, then froze.
The floor of pristine white marble looked almost too sacred to tread upon.
He imagined the royal palace—which he'd never seen—might feel something like this.
"What's wrong?"
"N-nothing."
He dusted the dirt from his shoes and entered.
Even so, checking Lumio's condition came first.
He might look fine on the outside, but he'd vomited nearly a bowlful of blood. His internal organs had to be severely damaged.
"Lord Lumio, we should stop by the infirmary first."
"No. I'm fine."
"You coughed up that much blood—there's no way you're fine!"
"It's too much trouble to go all the way down and come back up...... If you're that worried, how about this?"
"Your life could be in danger and you're saying—"
Julian stopped mid-sentence.
An enormous surge of mana was pouring from Lumio's body once again.
A warm, green light.
'Healing magic.'
But on a level incomparably higher than anything Lumio had used before.
Julian had a large scar on his wrist—left by a monster bite years ago.
The wound had been deep enough to sever an artery, and even after years, the gouged scar had never faded.
It was vanishing in real time.
That wasn't all.
The chronic ache in his shoulder disappeared. His eyesight, which had been below average, sharpened.
"......What is this?"
"Good enough?"
Through his newly clarified vision—
Lumio's dark circles were gone. His dull, rough skin had turned smooth. His eyes shone with more vitality than Julian had ever seen in them.
"I was told that no matter how powerful healing magic is, it can't heal the caster. Was that wrong?"
"No, that's correct. Mana is essentially life force. Draining your own life to heal yourself would be pointless."
"Then how......?"
"This place is rather special. Can't you feel it? The mana—it recharges infinitely."
"Something does feel different, but I can't quite tell."
Julian started with "But—"
"I can see you're fine now, Lord Lumio. How did you do all this? Including constructing this building."
"I didn't build it. I unearthed something that was already here. A secret weapon of the Kingdom of Rosteljier."
Julian couldn't fully grasp everything Lumio was saying. But he could tell it wasn't a lie.
"To put it simply—the kingdom's legacy that will save the North."
Lumio pressed a finger to his lips and continued.
"I'm only telling you. I need at least one person on my side. Keep this secret from everyone else."
"Even the Lord?"
"Yes. I'll tell him when the time is right. Oh—and make up an excuse to keep the territory's people from coming up here. Tell them the earthquake caused a landslide. They'll understand."
"......Understood."
Swept along by the pace of events, Julian found himself back outside before he knew it.
'Lord Lumio has changed a lot recently, sure, but......'
Today defied any attempt at making sense of it.
While Julian wrestled with his thoughts, a patch of blue-green grass peeking through the soil caught his eye.
In a radius of roughly ten meters around the Mage Tower, the frozen ground had thawed.
At this point, he could only laugh.
"There's no way my head can keep up with this."
It didn't matter.
If this was the path Lumio was walking, he'd simply follow from behind.
He had a strange certainty.
That the path wouldn't lead them astray.
***
After Julian left, I grinned like a madman.
Even after casting Third Circle healing magic, my mana was replenishing at breakneck speed.
One hundred percent pure.
The feeling of security was like coming home.
The horrific pain from vomiting blood was gone.
And beyond that—even the sting of Mana Reflux, which I'd been actively suppressing, couldn't be felt inside these walls.
Of course, that was only true within the Mage Tower.
Step outside, and the impurities would flood back in, bringing the pain with them.
True and complete recovery could only come from advancing my Circle.
A Circle was the vessel for storing mana.
It demanded insights—the principles of magic, the laws of elements—and ascending to higher Circles sometimes required specific herbs or mana stones.
Like pottery: rush it or make a mistake, and the shape warps beyond repair. Circles had to be built slowly and with care.
One wrong move, and even with this Mage Tower's absurd advantages, I could fail to reach the Ninth Circle just as I had in my previous life.
"......Well, getting to the Third Circle should be a piece of cake either way."
I sat cross-legged on the floor, closed my eyes, and began meditating.
I felt the Circle stirring within me and layered a magical formula over it.
There was one crucial detail here.
Something most mages didn't know.
Something even I hadn't known until I'd read it in the Mage Tower's library.
Each time you broke through to a new Circle, a boon was granted.
The boons differed by Circle. Breaking through to the Second granted resistance to a specific element.
"The North's cold, so obviously—cold resistance."
I embedded the ice element—a fusion of water and wind—into the formula. Then, stitch by stitch, I completed the Circle.
I reached the Second Circle just after dawn.
When I opened my eyes, a musty smell hit my nose.
My clothes were drenched in sweat, as if I'd molted like an insect.
My body felt noticeably lighter.
"Seems like it went well."
Two hot points pulsed inside me.
Reaching the Third Circle from here would take considerably more time.
I could gradually expand the Circle's capacity through spellcasting and break through naturally. But first, there was something else that needed doing.
A translucent blue magic circle materialized in the air like a hologram.
【Mage Tower Lv 2 Upgrade】
1. Low-Grade Mana Ore: 10 kg
2. Iron: 10 kg
3. Gold: 10 kg
4. Low-Grade Monster Core x3
【Floor 2: Magic Research Lab unlocked】
The research lab would let me craft magical items. Those could sell for a tidy sum.
Even with the Roa Trading Company debt settled, there were loans from other territories still outstanding, plus the knight order's expansion, wall repairs—expenses everywhere.
"I need to find a mine first."
I happened to know a place.
When I stepped outside, Julian was waiting.
"You're late."
"......Why are you here?"
"As if I'd leave you behind and go home alone. I passed your message to the territory like you asked, then came back up. You were so deep in concentration I waited out here. But why are you coming out shirtless?"
Julian handed me the outer layer he was wearing.
The cold resistance meant I wasn't freezing, but I didn't refuse.
"Thanks. Let's hurry back and get some sleep."
Tomorrow, I'd need to head beyond the North to reach the mine.
Speaking of the mine, a certain person came to mind.
'Come to think of it, she was somewhere near there.'
My former companion—a girl known as the Ice Witch, a walking calamity in her own right.
'Well, she wouldn't remember me...... but maybe I'll just pop by and see her face.'