Vol 3. Chapter 73: Painting Hall Tower

“I’m telling you, old man, that’s not a nice way to talk about someone, you know? Sure, your young master’s unlucky—fine—but you’re seriously saying I’m plain-looking??” Vinny pointed at himself, outrage all over his face.

“Which eye of yours is seeing ‘plain-looking’? I’m not even bragging—every time I get shoved into a dead end and still claw my way out by the skin of my teeth, it’s because of this face! Do you get it or not??”

“Enough. You noisy, brag-loving blue-haired brat—shut it. Go back where you came from.” The elder snapped, impatient.

“Go back where I came from??” Vinny’s eyes went wide. “Bro, are you confusing yourself? I’m Vinny. I’m here to pick up the rewards the Academy issued to me, and you’re telling me to go back??”

“Who’s ‘bro’ with you? No manners. And you say you’re Vinny—where’s your proof?” The elder flicked him a glance.

“Of course I’ve got proof. What, you think I’d lie?” Vinny said, pulling out his Carillian Student Card.

The elder took the card, swept his eyes over it, then over Vinny, then back to the card again.

Seriously, this old guy is really annoying. What a weird temper. Do I look that different from the picture on the ID??

“What, am I so handsome you couldn’t recognize me right away?” Vinny planted his hands on his hips and huffed.

“Quit preening.” The elder clicked his tongue and handed the card back. “You took so long to come claim your reward, I thought you’d given it up automatically.”

“Who gave it up automatically? I just didn’t know rewards were collected here!” Vinny shot back.

Only an idiot turns down free gains—especially when they’re what you earned.

With merit from countless battles, I deserve this reward!

“You didn’t even know that? You didn’t finish reading the Carillian Academy Student Code?” The elder glanced at him.

Read all of that? That book is thick as a brick, okay??

Vinny’s expression twitched.

Stuff like that isn’t it basically handed out so students can wipe their asses with it? Who actually reads the whole thing??

“You kids these days never do anything seriously,” the elder grumbled, and went to the magical identification device to verify his own identity.

Vinny pouted and followed the elder into the treasure hall.

But this treasure hall wasn’t like what Vinny had imagined at all—no glittering mountain of treasures the moment you walked in. He looked around and found that the domed hall and its corridors only displayed artworks. It was like an art gallery, not a hoard.

“Uh, sir?” Vinny deadpanned. “I’m here to pick rewards, not tour an art exhibit.”

“Brat, you think priceless rarities are just placed in the hall and corridors like zoo animals for everyone to stare at??” The elder scoffed at him. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

“If it’s not like that, then where am I supposed to pick my reward?” Vinny frowned.

“That’s exactly what I mean. You young people have zero artistic sense. Always rushing, obsessed with goals. Everything you do is like that.” The elder sneered.

“And that’s bad how? If you don’t have a purpose, how do you get anything done?” Vinny said, brow knitted.

“The treasures you want aren’t here, but everything displayed here is worth a fortune.” The elder swept a look around the hall.

“Huh? So all these artworks are real?” That instantly grabbed Vinny’s attention. He started inspecting the paintings and vases lining the corridor. “How much is a single one of these worth?”

“Kid, do you have to price-tag everything you see? If something is priceless, does it still need a worldly label slapped on it to matter?”

“Then what? If you don’t say what it’s worth, how am I supposed to know how valuable it is?” Vinny puffed his cheeks.

“Forget it. You don’t understand art.” The elder flicked his staff, and the wide-open treasure hall doors began closing toward the center.

Whoa. That’s fancy. A magically automatic door.

Vinny thought to himself.

And when the doors shut, several layers of magical barriers flared into view. The runes that flashed across them were so bright they almost blinded him.

With that many shields stacked, the defenses looked thicker than the fortress-like doors themselves. You could tell how heavily Carillian Academy guarded this place—and how important it was.

Vinny followed behind the elder. At first he thought they were going upstairs, but instead the elder led him into a room that looked like a library.

Then, right in front of him, the elder pressed a hidden mechanism on a bookshelf. After a while, a shelf slid aside, revealing a portal shaped like a magic array—red, and giving off a dangerously sharp aura.

The elder rearranged the floating characters in the air, and the red, static magic door began to rotate slowly, its color shifting from red to green.

A magic password gate??

Vinny had seen something similar inside the Secret Realm (Marsmo). Was this a Marsmo invention—a rare bit of Marsmo magical technology that survived to the present day?

It sure looked likely. Those floating symbols resembled Marsmo script. They felt like the same core system, altered slightly over time, but still clearly derived from Marsmo characters. Even if later generations couldn’t read them anymore, they kept using them anyway, because the habit stuck.

But...

Is it really okay for me to be seeing this?!

“Uh, sir, aren’t you... avoiding the password at all?” Vinny pressed his lips together. “I just saw the code. Even if you don’t care, I should care, right? What if—what if this place gets robbed later and they pin it on me??”

“You think things through pretty far.” The elder rolled his eyes at him. “Do you really think I wouldn’t have accounted for that, letting everyone who comes to pick rewards see the password?”

“Huh? Then what is this—”

“Tch. You’ve seen too little.” The elder snorted. “You think a place this secret uses a fixed password?”

“Relax. Next time you come, you won’t know it.”

Oh, so it’s a dynamic password.

Vinny finally got it.

Times really had progressed. In the Marsmo era, passwords were fixed. Now, with magic advancing, they’d developed dynamic magical codes.

Then how did this elder keep up with a constantly changing password?

Vinny was really curious.

The elder stepped into the magic passage. Vinny followed him in.

After a strange, subtle sensation and a brief weightlessness, Vinny felt his feet touch solid ground. When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a grand, imposing, and distinctly unique hall.

At the very center was a wide cross-shaped bridge, paved with fine, bright stone bricks. In the middle of that cross was a huge crystal platform, ringed with a railing, floating there without any support.

The cylindrical walls of the hall were covered in murals. What was odd was that they weren’t portraits of people. They were sketches of objects—each one bizarre in shape.

Holy crap.

Vinny looked around, unable to stop himself from marveling. This circular sky-tower felt like a surreal world all its own.

“Kid, what are you standing there for? If you’re not picking, I’m leaving.” The elder’s voice snapped Vinny back. Only then did Vinny realize the elder had somehow already gotten onto the floating crystal.

“Uh—ah. Okay.” Vinny walked onto the cross bridge—wide enough for multiple carriages side by side—and came to the elder. Seeing him standing on that floating crystal, Vinny hesitated.

“Tch. What, scared you’ll fall?” The elder mocked him. “You’re a Carillian Academy student and you’ve never seen a scene like this? Didn’t you even go through the Deeply Buried Secret Realm? And you’re scared of this??”

Vinny peered down through the gaps. It was an endless abyss. All he could see was layers of fog stacked over fog, and that was the limit of his vision.

“I’ve seen it, yeah. Exactly because I’ve seen it, I understand the wisdom of not standing under a collapsing wall.” Vinny shot the elder a look.

“Enough. This isn’t some collapsing wall. This is the safest place in Carillian Academy besides the Order Spire.” The elder snorted. “If you don’t get on, I’ll treat it as forfeiting your reward.”

“Tch.” Vinny swung himself over the railing onto the crystal. Instantly, a hard punch of weightlessness hit him. He grabbed the rail, nearly losing balance.

Then his view started climbing fast.

The crystal under his feet was rising.

And as it rose, more and more floating “artworks” filled his sight.

“Sir, are we there yet?” Vinny looked up at the spire overhead. It seemed endless, swallowed by thick fog.

“What do you mean, ‘there yet’?” The elder gave him a look like he was stupid. “We’ve been there the whole time. You blind or something?”

“Huh? But there’s nothing here.” Vinny blinked.

“Your eyes broken? You don’t see the floating paintings? Pick. Which one do you want?”

“Wait—what?” Vinny went completely blank. “Sir, I didn’t come here to be a collector. I’m not here to pick art.”

“You don’t want them?” The elder stared at him.

“I thought the rewards were enchanted gear. How is it a pile of paintings?? ...Also, how much are these worth?” Vinny clung to the idea that he shouldn’t leave empty-handed. If they were giving him art, fine. He’d just take it back and sell it.

“Uh, then... that one.” Vinny pointed at a floating painting of a strange, heavy crossbow. “Looks decent.”

“Fine.” The elder raised his hand. The painting drifted over as if it understood words, hovering in front of them, then dropped into Vinny’s hands.

The instant it touched him, it became a real object—a heavy crossbow identical in size and form to the painting.

“Wait—what?!” Vinny froze, feeling the weight in his arms, eyes wide.

“Stop acting like you’ve never seen anything,” the elder said with clear disdain.

I haven’t seen anything like this before. What do you want me to do, play it cool??

“Aren’t we... picking artworks?” Vinny stammered.

“You actually wanted art?” The elder said breezily. “Didn’t realize you had taste. Then we’d need to go back upstairs. Everything you saw in the main hall was real art.”

“No, no. I mean—these ‘paintings’ floating here are all real items?!” Vinny gaped.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re still acting like a bumpkin. Any enchanted item above a certain tier turns into a painting in here. That’s the authority of the [Painting Hall Tower].” The elder explained.

“Whoa, that’s insane.” Vinny stared at the tower, the air packed with floating paintings.

“Sir, I don’t want this one. Can I swap?” Vinny said.

“You’re so damn picky.” The elder rolled his eyes. “You said you wanted it.”

“Because I thought everything here was just paintings!” Vinny clearly didn’t want a heavy crossbow.

Seriously, what was he supposed to do with this thing? He wasn’t some thieving assassin—and even assassins couldn’t lug a monster crossbow like that around.

“This is a fire-element enchanted heavy crossbow. You sure you don’t want it?”

“Fire? Then I definitely don’t want it.” Vinny lifted his chin.

Even for enchanted weapons, the spell power you can draw out depends on your elemental affinity. A fire-affinity specialist could make this thing sing. Someone like him, with low fire affinity, would get nothing out of it.

Completely useless.

“Sir, I’m not taking this crossbow. I need to pick again.” Vinny said. “How do I put it back?”

“Just let go.” The elder replied flatly.

“Huh? Won’t it fall?” Vinny was doubtful, but he did it anyway.

Just like the elder said, the crossbow didn’t drop. It floated in midair, drifting back to its original spot, and while it moved it reshaped into a painting again.

That’s... really something.

It was genuinely jaw-dropping.

Vinny couldn’t help thinking so.

“Sir, what’s with that?” Vinny pointed upward. “Some paintings are gold, some are silver?”

“Gold means enchanted items at [Magic Tool] tier or higher. If you want one of those, you can only pick a single item.” The elder said calmly.

“What? Only one?” Vinny blinked.

“What else did you think?” The elder snapped. “If you didn’t have two rewards stacked together, you wouldn’t even be allowed in here. You think anyone can just stroll into this place?”