#mage tower

Chapter One: The Tower Tourist

Lee Hoyeol makes his excuses to his parents and all but flees the house. 

“I can’t believe I ran away like I was twelve,” he mutters to himself. 

Lee Yerim, his third sister, had returned home during his visit. 

Unexpectedly. 

Admittedly, she lives there. So it’s only fair that she would come back to the house eventually, but Lee Hoyeol times his visits specifically around her own schedule. He knows she’s supposed to be away at work until at least six today. 

He’s positive that she had interrupted his visit on purpose. 

He manages to go weeks avoiding too much direct contact with her, his wensu. He can’t go too long or she’ll show up at his door like a bad penny, but he times it so that their meetings are closer to ships passing in the night. He’ll stay until just after she returns home. He’ll go to family dinners where their older sisters and Arang can be used as buffers. He even responds to all the chats. 

As the youngest child and only son, his three older sisters had always gotten along well. Himself? Not so much, but they’d grown up since they were children. Their relationships now are far smoother and stronger for the troubles of the past.

But… “Wensu is Wensu,” Lee Hoyeol says with conviction. 

She’ll always figure out a way to mess with him.

It is barely past noon when he makes it to the bus stop and he can already feel the exhaustion begin to weigh him down. He hadn't made any plans today, he never does when he visits his parents. Sometimes it’s an all day event, other days - like today - it's just a stop in. 

He really had been planning to spend more time with them though, even his short stops are longer than this, but usually his other sisters and even Arang are there to divide Yerim’s attention. 

At least it was after lunch, he never wants to miss his parents cooking.

He… doesn’t really want to go home just yet. He knows that if he does, he’ll just spend the rest of the day lounging in bed before reheating leftover take out, going to bed, and waking up for work. Same as always.

There’s not anything else he wants to do though.

He looks at his phone.

The only recent messages are from family and work, Lee Hoyeol really doesn’t have anyone he can just call up to hang out with. 

Should he go somewhere by himself?

Would that be weird?

He rarely goes out unless necessary, so he’s not even sure what his options are.

With the day still early, Lee Hoyeol doesn't really want to head back to his lonely apartment that only promises reheated take out and a place to sleep before going back to work. The barracks hadn’t been great, but at least there were others around.

“Hey, did you hear that the Magic Tower is open to the public?”

The words slip through the constant noise of the sitting city, just barely catching his attention.

“Really? I thought it was just players?”

Lee Hoyeol looks up from his phone, eyes focusing on the passing strangers.

They’re chatting. Animated. The easy kind of excitement that he feels like he barely remembers.

“Nah, they’ve got reporters in there all the time waiting for big shots to step through for the portals, you can’t tell me all those leeches are players.”

Magic Tower? His fingers hover over the screen, the text messages from work and family momentarily forgotten.

“Huh. Never thought I’d see the day, back when it was a game you couldn’t get in there unless you were paying out the nose for the portal fees. I heard those are free now?”

“Yeah, something about-”

The conversation moves out of range, but his mind is already spinning.

The Magic Tower.

The Wizard’s Tower.

When Arcana was just a game, before it bled into reality, the Magic Tower was the strongest force on the Continent. Even emperors would bow their heads to establish friendly relations with the reclusive mages. Though they never took part in worldly affairs.

He’s  seen the Tower before of course. In advertisements and streams, and later, flickering in the background of news reports and looming over Seoul in tourist photos.

But he’s never actually  been there in person. He never had a reason to.

Despite being considered the number one player destination… It wasn’t somewhere he’d seen while playing a decade ago either.

Back then, Lee Hoyeol had been  extremely into his character settings and focused all of his attention on a single area at the corner of the game map. He’d not played long enough to need to leave that starting zone, nor taken any quests that would necessitate wasting hard earned gold on portal when his own two feet would suffice.

But...

Chronicles of Arcana.

Considering how short his time playing was, the impact on his life was disproportionate.

He’s sure that’s how most people feel though. Especially those that  didn’t play it. Which, with as prohibitively expensive the tech and subscriptions were, were the majority of people.

Lee Hoyeol hadn’t paid much attention to Arcana after he quit. Even as the world went to hell and picked itself up again in a new normal, he avoided most information around ‘players’ after his military service - despite the ever increasing news coverage and growing industry surrounding them.

He hadn’t played  long . Just a few months. Just enough to be forever embarrassed by that part of his life, but those memories, dusty and half forgotten, still settle somewhere deep in his bones. 

He can't deny that he's a little curious, just a tiny bit, about the most famous landmark in Arcana, now in Seoul. Just a small spark of excitement at the idea. A feeling echoing back to before his life became nothing but obligations. Studying. Military. Work. From when he could lose himself in another world for hours, not because it was productive, but because he wanted to…

Lee Hoyeol has nowhere to be… And the Magic Tower is open to the public…

Before he can second-guess himself, he’s already pulling up the directions on his phone.

It’s bound to be busy. Unlike rifts, the Magic Tower is visible to everyone, same as anything  else that comes through collapses. 

The result loads… It’s not even an hour from his current location.

Just two stops, a switch of the bus lines, and then a single stop after… 

He shouldn’t be considering this. 

He should go home. That would be the responsible thing to do. Go home, prepare for work on Monday. Rest. If he goes it'll be an all day affair. He’ll have at least a two hour trip back to his own apartment. He'll have to switch buses three or four times. It'll be inconvenient. He’ll likely have to toss some of the take out away. Withdraw more money. It’ll-

Hoyeol turns on his heel and makes his way to a different bus stop before he can talk himself out of going. If he catches the bus on its way there instead of back, it’ll save time.

Why not?

He might as well go once in his life. Experience what he missed out on while suffering in the remote corner of the continent that held Akshan. 

Spontaneity was supposedly good for your health.

Luck must be on Lee Hoyeol’s side today (despite the surprise interruption by Wensu), the bus he was trying to catch pulled up just as he reached the curb. He barely had to pause before stepping on board.

He even managed a good seat. A minor miracle. It was a convenient hour, apparently, because no one sat beside him for the entire ride.

The next transfer was busier, forcing him to stand. He didn’t mind. Nervous energy had begun to buzz under his skin, keeping him too restless to sit anyways. Instead, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through whatever information he could find about the Magic Tower.

He only had the vaguest knowledge of its inner workings. He knew the basics: the Tower had a Master (though no one knew who they were), the Chief Mage handled daily operations, but the hierarchy beneath them was murky.

How many tiers were there? Two? Three? More? How many mages called the tower home? Did he have to look out for anyone?

Apparently, it was three.

Twenty senior mages, all masters of a specific field.

Adepts, those skilled enough to work independently and having chosen a field of study.

And apprentices, at the bottom of the hierarchy. The ones not quite ready to pick a final area of study and devote themselves to it. The ones still learning about magic and control. The tier every player was considered to be.

The Chief Mage was named Marcello. His skeletal appearance was a topic of speculation on the forums, but few people, players or otherwise, had seen him or any of the senior mages in person. Even when the Magic Tower had formally pledged its aid to Earth and the AAU, the announcement had come by letter.

No press conference. No grand speech. Just parchment, ink, and magic.

The bus hissed to a stop, jolting Lee Hoyeol from his thoughts.

When he stepped off, so did most of the passengers. A flood of people moved around him, in front of him, the crowd was thick with tourists and spectators. Normal people and players decked out in armor and robes blended together with ease. 

For a moment, anxiety started to build. Hoyeol hadn’t really thought about that aspect of the Tower. Hadn’t thought of the fact that he’d be alone among a throng of strangers. People that  want  or  need  to be here. 

The Magic Tower was open to the public, but that didn’t mean he belonged here.

That he should be here when it was just a momentary whim. He had better things to do, surely.

That uncertainty vanishes the moment the Tower comes into view.

It takes his breath away.

It shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does. He remembers the promotionals. The art of it all. One of the most amazing things about  Chronicles of Arcana  were the architectural designs. More European than Asian, but always magnificent. Even Akshan with its dreary, rundown appearance was marvelous in its own way. 

The concept art alone of the Tower was  stunning . 

But nothing had prepared him for seeing it in person.

The Mage Tower loomed over Seoul’s skyline, an impossible monolith of white marble so tall it seemed poised to pierce the very heavens. Unlike the sleek glass and steel buildings surrounding it, its gothic spires spoke of ages past, of timeless elegance. As though it alone had stood watch as the city was built around it. An intricate golden clock adorned its face, and other massive seals of gold marked its towering walls.

The crowning jewel though, high above its peak, was a floating ring, suspended impossibly in the air, encircling a luminous blue crystal that pulsed faintly with arcane energy. Sunlight streamed through the clouds, casting ethereal beams that only highlighted the structure’s beauty.

It didn’t just stand out.. 

It  eclipsed the entire city. 

And yet, despite the splendor, despite the sheer wonder of it, his chest tightened.

A knot of anxiety coiled tight, the press of the crowd not helping. As beautiful as the building was, as good as the impressions from when he played were… Arcana marked the end of a period of his life. Just as it marked a beginning. Those ending memories were long buried, faded and near forgotten.

No, the beginning was far more relevant. Far more recent. The last time he had stood before an Arcanian structure, it had been twisted, fragmented. An ugly thing of metal and concrete and wood.

Rifts had first appeared part way through his mandatory military service, not even a full two years ago yet. He had spent  months  stationed near discovered rifts. Guarding them as players did their best to clear them, or watching as they failed. A rift collapse never blended the two worlds seamlessly. It  shattered them. Stitched the pieces together into something twisted. Unnatural.

He witnessed the earth being forcefully torn apart and reassembled as monster’s poured from the aftermath as they could do nothing but patrol the new perimeters.

The countryside faced the worst of it. He had seen streets split open into canyons, buildings cleaved by impossible mountains, neighborhoods swallowed by biomes that had no business existing on Earth as monsters clawed at whatever defenses were placed…

The clean up was never pleasant.

A sharp jolt knocks him forward, snapping him from his thoughts.

Someone had bumped into him from behind. He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped moving.

The stranger mutters something, definitely  not Korean or even English, but the tone carries unmistakable annoyance. Lee Hoyeol blinks and mutters an automatic apology.

Taking a deep breath, he lowers his head, he starts walking again.

This wasn’t a ruin. This wasn’t some broken landscape warped by collapse. This was the Magic Tower. Whole, untouched. Beautiful. 

His heart thuds faster the closer he gets. 

This was a glimpse into the world he left behind with his dark history. A glimpse of the original beauty of the world that has carved itself into reality.

The Cataclysm hadn't been pretty. Rifts collapsing around the world. Players dying as they learned exactly what it meant for things to no longer be a game. Casualties in cities and towns. (His own experience with the military was far from the worst of it.) 

Rankings. 

Updates. The rise of guilds, both old and new.

The AAU. 

New laws. Treaties.

A mess, but a necessary one. A world forced to come together.

Lee Hoyeol exhales sharply with a small shake of his head, snapping himself back to the present just as he steps into the tower proper. He’s spending far too much time in memories today.

His skin prickles as  something  washes over him. He can’t explain it… not quite a chill, not quite warmth… but definitely  something  . He tenses on instinct. It’s just in his head, right? Probably his imagination playing tricks on him. A side effect of how on edge he is. The Magic Tower doesn’t give buffs or anything. He’s not a  player.  

The thoughts scatter the moment he actually takes in the interior.

It’s…  indescribable . Mysterious. Otherworldly.

The first chamber alone is… vast. That’s the only word capable of capturing it. Too vast. The sheer scale makes absolutely no sense. Not with the outer dimensions of the tower. Not taking in what little he knows of structural integrity. Not considering the halls he can see stretching from the room into the distance. And considering how enormous the structure already is… it’s as if different laws of physics were being applied to it.

The walls stretch  impossibly high, lined with towering bookshelves crammed with tomes. He sees large rolling ladders, as he would expect to see in a mansion movie set, and far fancier than even those. Players dot the shelves, some in robes, some in jeans. Many of them are perched and reading on the very ladders they climbed to the books.

But, more than the size, more than the extraordinary amount of books, at its heart - its undeniable crown jewel - stands a  portal .

Portals.

Massive, instant teleportation magic. High-level, nearly untouchable. Only a handful of players had ever been able to use the spell in game.

Of course, it was impossible to compare a player’s portals to  this .

A bracketed semicircle, its stone frame carved with shifting, shimmering runes that never still. The very depths of the portal seem to swirl with them, a liquid-like glow flickering between colors as the magic threads itself together in an endless, mesmerizing dance. He catches brief impressions of ever changing destinations, places it must have previously - or currently be - connected to.

Lee Hoyeol forces himself to look away. 

The tower is supposedly open to players along this first floor. Which, considering nothing has stopped him thus far, means that it probably really  is open to civilians as well.

At least, he didn't see anything saying otherwise. They even offer guided tours - for a small fee, of course. 

Floating orbs drift lazily overhead, casting a soft, steady glow across the marble floors. Books and scrolls glide through the air, moving as if unseen hands were fetching them from one shelf to another. Letters race past them all, some in the telltale fold of airplanes - likely something taught to the mages by players…

His gaze flickers to an oddly empty stretch of wall, odd when everywhere else is full of books… Except, it isn’t quite empty? 

He notices it belatedly. A distortion like the surface isn’t quite… solid. More wavy, like the portal, yet distinctly different. Slightly transparent.

A barrier?

As he gets closer, he can see a void of stars just behind the bricks. Endless, dark, and deep. Stairs hang suspended, scattered half haphazardly, at all angles, as they flicker in and out of existence. It is nothing that could exist in reality, and yet there it is. Beautiful and somehow calming. 

Considering that none of the visitors head for the stairs, it must be off limits and somehow enforced. Maybe the barrier bounces intruders off? Have enough people have tried, and failed, that it’s simply known not to bother?

He wouldn’t know. His research could be considered brief at  best .

Lee Hoyeol shifts in indecision. As curious as he is, he’s definitely not going where he’s not allowed, but… That’s the problem. Everything feels so  open.  Too open really. He’s not sure what he wants to see or where anything might be in the tower. He’s not even sure he’d be able to  tell  if he was somewhere he shouldn’t be…

So… a tour seems like the easiest option.

Another brief glance at the impossible stars, he turns away and walks towards what looks like an information booth. The kind you’d see at attractions across the country.

And yeah, it really  must  be his lucky day, because just as he approaches, a tour group has already been assembled and it  is  where you sign up for them. With no need to wait, he quickly pays the fee and slips into the crowd.

The tour winds through the Tower’s sprawling halls, sharing glimpses of what life within must be like. Grand dining areas where long tables are set for regular meals and smaller, more private meal areas for mages who’s research throws them off schedule. Classrooms lined with chalkboards covered in intricate formulas. Study halls illuminated by the same floating orbs of light as the entrance. Dormitory-style rooms, communal spaces for apprentices. Adepts and above are apparently granted private quarters higher in the tower. 

They even walk past three entirely separate libraries, each distinct from the massive collection in the main hall. All in use and busier than any of the other locations they’d been through.

Then, the tour comes across a class in session and stops to observe.

Inside, students are practicing elemental magic. Hoyeol assumes they’re testing affinities as they prepare to dedicate themselves to their chosen fields. Perhaps even to apprentice under a senior mage directly. Surely some will have more skill in one type of magic than another. 

The board in the front of the room is absolutely  covered  in writing. Complex circles. Intricate symbols. Arcane script. It reminds him of the portal’s stone work. The delicate, interwoven characters seem almost alive, shifting subtly as he watches.

He recognizes a few characters from old  Chronicles of Arcana promotional materials. Back then, adventurers had a natural translation feature, making international crossplay seamless. As a result, the script was rarely used. A set dressing at best, an aesthetic choice. 

A shame considering how beautiful it was.

He heard that players had that same benefit. The effect now converts their real life words as easily as it did in game.

Small groups of students, apprentices, are arranged around the room, working through each element one by one. Some struggle to conjure the faintest spark, while others summon small flickers of fire, floating droplets of water, or even small tornadoes that spin lazily in their palms. 

Several mages move from group to group as they cycle through the elements. They aren’t necessarily any  older  than the those being taught, but he assumes they’re more experienced. 

There’s just something  different  about them. It’s how they hold themselves. They’re more confident maybe, just a bit… larger in a sense somehow. A presence. Like they take up more space in a way he can’t quite define.

Their movements are assured, precise, as they instruct students through the process. Perhaps they’re specialists for each element. 

Lee Hoyeol watches. It’s amazing. The ease at which they command their magic.

Adventurers - players - use a system called skills. Abilities unlocked through their character class. Some are earned upon the initial class change, others through leveling up and practice, and a few are rewards from the rare class quests.

However, that’s not how it works for  Arcanians .

His attention is drawn to the nearest group. They seem to be working on fire magic. Some manage steady flickers, while others produce only sputtering sparks. He can’t quite hear their instructor’s explanations, but he can see the focus they give it.

The tour guide, which he now realizes must be an actual  Tower  mage, like an Arcanian-tower mage, Cleo… s  omething, she said to call her Klee, does her best to describe what they’re seeing. 

Klee begins to explain how the magic is done in as simple of terms as she can. It’s not like any of  their group would be mages after all. Simple is better.

But, it makes  sense  as she talks. 

Searching. Interfering. Manifesting.

Three stages of magic. Of these,  searching  was by far the most challenging. It is also the first step of  any  magic. If you get it wrong, you can’t even move on to the next step. And even if you did, your magic would be extremely inefficient at  best .

“First, mages investigate the mana at the point they want to focus on. Often, this is the mana within the mage, but sometimes it’s the ambient mana. The more ambient mana a mage can use, the more economical the spell becomes, and the longer they can work. Most of the apprentices here are currently investigating, or exploring the mana they plan to use.”

Her voice is steady, but not in the same way as saying something through rote memorization, this is obviously her own take on the subject. It’s interesting, so different from the skills he knew in the game- from the ones he used. He can almost imagine the mana swirling through the air, gathered by the mages in front of them. 

“Once the mage collects the appropriate mana, they move on to  inference,  the process of arranging the mana into the appropriate form. Usually these involve the mage imagining the required circle or runic symbols or even verbal components. The releasing of the mana at that point is the  manifestation of it as a full spell!”

“Miss Klee, is that how player’s summon elements too?”

“Inference, how does that-”

“Are verbal incantations-”

“-fireball actually forty-” 

“How do-” 

“Why is-”

The group explodes into questions, and Klee looks momentarily overwhelmed. “One at a time!” She manages to get out, quieting the group. “I’ve heard that adventurers use a process called  ‘skills ,’ but we haven’t gotten a very good explanation on that. As for-”

But Lee Hoyeol isn’t listening anymore, he’s lost track. Her voice fades into the background as his focus shifts back to the apprentices in front of him as one finally succeeds in summoning a full flame.

Klee must be a really amazing teacher, he feels like he can see each step. Like he could just reach out to the mana that would be in front of him....

The flames flicker and dance. 

Lee Hoyeol can imagine the threads of mana twisting, pulling into unfamiliar, fantastical shapes eventually turning into a perfect knot. The ignition of the oxygen with just a small spark, maintained only by the mage’s constant fuel. 

He lifts his hand wistfully. Even as a player,  this  he would never be capable of. A class with no special abilities. That was his fate in the game. A class chosen only by a teenager’s misguided idea of “cool” and “edgy.” He never had, and never would have, skills even  related  to magic as a demon hunter. It was a class that could only level through daily fetch quests. He had delivered  so  much bread to reach the paltry level of 55. (Which, at the time, had felt like an accomplishment...)

But… at least in his imagination, at this moment, it seems so  easy.

As if he could just… reach out. Arrange the threads. And…  pull.

A small flame blazes to life in the palm of his hand.

!!!!!  

Lee Hoyeol panics, shaking his hand as if to put it out. But the more he moves, the brighter it burns. His heart races - way too fast to be normal - before a wave of fatigue crashes over him all at once.

He’s overwhelmed, barely registering the sudden weakness in his limbs. 

Disbelief washes over him. 

He faintly recalls a setting, an absolutely ridiculous one, that he’d given to the only character he’d ever played in Arcana. Mere words on a page considering the class he took, but the thought flickers just like the flame in his hand. 

He thinks he hears someone shout as his vision dims, his body already falling as the flame sputters out and his consciousness fades.