At that time, Lee Jeong-jun was busy working part-time.
After he had lost his last mage character so abruptly, he quit the game altogether.
But even for someone as busy as Lee Jeong-jun, there needed to be a place to relax, and for him, that place was the <Blackout> community site.
– Goddaaaaammit! I found it! I really found it!
– What? What? Did you find the post that jerk deleted and ran off?
– No! I found a clue!
– What kind of clue?
It was a busier day than usual. After finishing the unloading job and barely grabbing a bite to eat, he pulled out his phone to check the community site while his coworkers stepped out for a smoke. The mage forum was buzzing like a festival.
– No, I didn’t find the artifact yet! But it looks like there’s a hint in the Volcatornic Magic Tower??
– Those outlaw mages? But what’s that got to do with the artifact?
– Turns out they have an artifact sealed in their warehouse.
– Huh? I’ve raided that place several times, but I never saw any sealed artifact.
– Nah, there’s a hidden passageway. Shit, I nearly killed myself finding it, lol.
– For real? But how do you break the seal?
– I have no idea, lol. Now I’ve gotta start digging from square one again, this is driving me nuts, lol.
– Ah, that post-deleter jerk. What are we supposed to do?
– Don’t mention him, lol. He’s probably sitting back somewhere, smirking at all of us struggling.
– Just thinking about it pisses me off. Anyway, thanks. I’m logging in today to raid those outlaws’ hideouts first thing.
Would all their hard work ever pay off?
Lee Jeong-jun couldn’t dwell on it any longer.
“Jeing-jeon-ah! Let’s get back to work!”
It was a memory from a certain day.
***
The room he reached through the burning passage was a warehouse of moderate size.
But it wasn’t an ordinary warehouse.
Various magical materials, spellbooks, artifacts—
Items lay scattered everywhere. Each was valuable enough to make any mage’s eyes widen with desire.
In other words, this was a treasure vault.
It’s exactly like it was in the game.
According to a user on the forums, there was supposed to be another hidden room here.
However, this place was highly sensitive. Security spells were woven in every corner, making it difficult to spread one’s magical power freely.
Then what if I just disabled all of them?
Just as he had temporarily disabled the barrier on the passageway, maybe he could do the same here.
No, it’s impossible.
Or rather, it was possible, but there just wasn’t nearly enough time for it.
Even the security spells alone numbered in the dozens here.
There has to be a clue. There’s got to be something.
After a few failed attempts, Jun finally spotted an area he suspected could lead to a hidden passage.
Focusing on his senses instead of magical power, he detected a faint breeze seeping through a small gap just like in Shylock’s hideout.
It was an unusually cluttered spot within the warehouse. It was messy and filled with nothing but old junk, the kind any mage would avoid touching.
What kind of confidence is this?
There wasn’t even a proper security spell in place. Just like in Shylock’s hideout there was only a wall concealed by an illusion.
Did they simply never consider an intruder might make it in?
However, Jun’s assumption was slightly off.
Since only designated items could be taken from this warehouse in the first place, other mages affiliated with the magic tower could simply pick up exactly what they needed and leave.
Naturally, they had no reason to pay attention to all that junk scattered around.
With that in mind, Jun stepped over the pile of clutter and slipped through the illusionary wall.
Thankfully, he didn’t sense any security spells in this area.
“…So this is it.”
Unlike the warehouse he had just left, this was a very plain space.
It almost felt like an impression of the person who had created this room.
Gray brick walls, not a single window.
Aside from a circulating spell keeping the air fresh, the room was surprisingly spacious but otherwise bare.
And in the center of that room, something was floating in midair.
“…A dimensional warehouse.”
He had heard of it.
In his life as Lee Jeong-jun, he had come across the term while searching for traces of Shylock in a newspaper article.
An article reported that the Zenkhar Magic Tower had collapsed due to a criminal group targeting the countless artifacts stored within its dimensional warehouse.
The dimensional warehouse was so renowned that just the mention of Zenkhar Magic Tower immediately brought it to mind.
And if this warehouse were here in the Volkatornic Magic Tower, what could that mean?
The fall of the Zenkhar Magic Tower, which even had the imperial family’s interest, was tied to the Volkatornic Magic Tower.
Jun gazed cautiously at the dimensional warehouse.
He could feel the faint scent of magical power emanating from it.
Though he couldn’t fully sense the proper form, he felt that someone had been casting spells here periodically.
They called it a sealed artifact, right? If it’s not Shylock or someone of his caliber, unsealing this wouldn’t be easy.
He guessed that the one casting spells here was likely the tower master of Volkatornic, Sergey.
At the time, the imperial family declared that the fall of the Zenkhar Magic Tower was the doing of the Heavenly Church.
There was no doubt they had found traces of the Heavenly Church at the scene.
But the greatest treasure was supposedly here in the Volkatornic Magic Tower?
This is undeniable evidence.
Just as he stepped confidently toward the dimensional warehouse, sure of his conclusions, the world around him changed.
***
It was a landscape unlike anything Jun had ever seen.
Magic which should have flowed in harmony with nature instead devoured it. In fact, it swallowed the very fabric of space.
The control over magical power here was beyond anything conceivable.
No, this wasn’t mere control. Rather, it should be seen as sheer domination.
[Mental Barrier: Active Volcano]
The entire area was engulfed in flames.
Gone was the stifling, enclosed scenery of the warehouse. In its place lay a blazing expanse of scorched earth.
“Ugh…!”
Jun instinctively hunched over as he inhaled sharply.
Hot air instantly entered his mouth, flowed through his airway, and into his lungs.
“Ugh…”
He held his breath.
Exhaling meant he would have to take in even more of the scorching air.
The skills [Steadfast Will] and [Unwavering Heart] calmed his startled mind.
He wouldn’t die.
Even if he couldn’t breathe for a moment, he wouldn’t collapse.
With his composure regained, Jun looked around at the completely transformed landscape.
Crazy… they actually embedded a [Mental Barrier] inside the Magic Tower…?
The very [Mental Barrier] Sergey had cast within the game <Blackout>.
But no matter where he looked, Sergey was nowhere to be seen.
Did he set this up here before leaving the tower? No wonder the security was unbelievably lax.
Even Jun hadn’t known about this.
No one in the game community had warned of this kind of trap. Not even the veteran players who had posted walkthroughs.
Well, in the game, this was a space you could only enter after killing Sergey.
So this was a space created by Sergey’s very mind.
Naturally, without Sergey’s permission, no one could enter or leave.
He had walked right into a hunter’s trap.
But that’s only true in the game.
First, he needed air.
He moved his magical power.
But what should have been as natural as breathing was impossible.
The magical power saturating this space wasn’t of nature. It was Sergey’s magical power.
However, there was a way to overcome it temporarily.
Jun reached into the space pouch he had borrowed from Chloe.
Luckily, his fingers closed around the item he was looking for right away.
A top-grade magic stone.
It was a rare item, hard to acquire even if you wanted one, but the count had managed to secure it by threatening Adolf.
Definitely high quality.
Jun immediately drew magical power from the magic stone and began casting a spell.
[Enchantment: Elemental Armory]
[Attribute Enchantment: Water]
A substantial amount of magical power flowed out of the stone.
In a space saturated entirely with fire magic, invoking an opposing attribute required twice the usual effort.
But thanks to this, he now had a way to endure this hot environment that felt like it might melt him at any moment.
“Huuuh… cough… hack…!”
He took rapid, desperate breaths. It still felt like inhaling air in a scorching steam bath.
Still, compared to before, he could at least manage to breathe.
Finally, with some breathing room, Jun extended [Scan] around him.
To sustain a Mental Barrier of this magnitude, there had to be a powerful energy source nearby.
“Bingo.”
He sensed a strong energy close by.
“Haa… haa…”
Sweat poured down his body like rain.
He had managed to partially overcome the environment, but it was far from perfect.
He was merely resisting it.
A battle in these conditions… just about the worst.
If this were the game, the difficulty level would have skyrocketed beyond belief by now.
And that wasn’t the only problem.
Considering the number of magic stones I have, I can’t hold out for long.
Even now, the magical power within the top-grade magic stone in his hand was running low.
Once the magic stones he got from Adolf were depleted, it would spell his end.
The more time passed, the worse it would be for Jun.
“Hoo…”
He had no idea how long he had been climbing this steep path.
Gradually, though, his destination started to come into view.
“Damn it. Of course.”
And there, as if it had been waiting for him, something was positioned in place.
At first glance, it reminded him of the armadillo he had seen on Earth.
But on closer inspection, it wasn’t an armadillo at all. It had the form of a lizard.
A bipedal lizard whose entire body was layered with thick muscles.
But perhaps due to this strange environment, its appearance was far from ordinary.
“A Lizardman…? No, that’s not it. Now I remember.”
Its body looked as if lava, not blood, coursed through its veins.
It reminded him of a fire spirit from a game—a salamander, perhaps—but unlike a spirit, this creature had a solid physical body.
“Another one of those Heavenly Church creations…”
In the game, this creature was known as “The Fire Eater”.
More specifically, it was a chimera that the Heavenly Church had created by fusing monster and human.
[Moooorrrgh…]
The creature seemed oblivious to the presence of Jun who was still some distance away and was drinking the lava flowing nearby.
Normally, its hand should have melted the instant it touched the molten rock, but it remained unscathed.
[Thirrrssty…]
As it drank, the lava pulsing through its veins grew even brighter.
[Grrraaah…]
Yet the creature still didn’t seem to quench its thirst and kept plunging its hand into the stream of lava.
“…….”
Jun watched it closely.
In the game, this thing first appeared when the Volcatronic Magic Tower officially began collaborating with the Heavenly Church.
It was a mid-boss monster encountered in the dungeon before facing Sergey, the tower’s master.
The creature’s weak spot was its heart, and when he examined it closely, he noticed a gem embedded in its chest. It was glowing crimson as if hardened by molten lava.
That must be the core sustaining this whole mental barrier.
He wondered if he could take it out with a single strike.
Jun pulled a top-grade magic stone from his space pouch and weighed his options.
Preparing a water spell will take time, but… with it distracted, it’s possible.
Fortunately, the creature was too absorbed in gulping down lava to notice that Jun had drawn close.
One shot is all I need.
He began to gather his magical power.
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