Ja Soo-jung

Ja Soo-jung, the Lord of Manseng and Tower Master, is the creator and chief administrator of the Tower. Born as a baron's daughter in another world and later succeeding him as Baron Amethyst, she combines inherited perfect memory with captured Dragon authorities to record lives, simulate alternate histories, preserve people in recreated worlds, and construct the Tower as a refuge for those abandoned elsewhere. Her ordinary middle-school identity and the expressive Lord of Manseng are not separate people, but neither should she be conflated with the Lady Who Walks Through the Mirage, her daughter and one of the Tower's pillars.

Biography

Baron Amethyst and the architecture of salvation

Ja Soo-jung is born into a collapsing kingdom as a baron's daughter, with platinum-blonde hair, purple eyes, and an expressionless face. Her ancestral Dragon blood gives her Perfect Recollection, derived from Hamustra: she remembers everything she sees, hears, and feels and can replay those memories like lucid dreams. At seventeen she succeeds her dead father as Baron Amethyst, and later records call her Viscount Amethyst; at eighteen she uses political marriage, personal talent, and alliances with dangerous nobles to break the kingdom's conservative order. (Chapters 210–216 and 222)

Her rise is not a conventional reformer's campaign to separate good rulers from bad ones. Ja deliberately gathers murderers, butchers, rebels, and other compromised people, asks them to love her, and turns that attachment into leverage over the entire kingdom. Gu Won-ha, her second adviser and vassal, records the sins and capabilities of the people around her while remaining devoted to her. Ja protects displaced subjects and destroys organizations such as the Red Nails, but she also refuses to pretend that the people useful to salvation become innocent merely because she loves them. (Chapters 211–220)

The resulting Golden Rule makes Ja the point at which power and pain meet. Subjects harmed by the kingdom can demand that the seventh Duke receive an equivalent injury, allowing the victim's suffering to become a public claim rather than a grievance rulers ignore. Ja intends to extend that law across the world. She also wants power for its own practical necessity: only the most powerful being can guarantee that no authority may dismiss the abandoned people whose claims she accepts. (Chapters 217 and 220–221)

To build a refuge on that scale, Ja captures or inherits several Dragon powers. The Earth Bone Dragon's Box archives living memories and can recreate bodies; the Gold Dragon's Eyes and Ice River Dragon's Breath let her store other lives, trace causality, and simulate worlds; other combined authorities contribute time and the manipulation of essence. The Tower uses those powers as an integrated structure—a vast memory box that can reproduce worlds, admit people as themselves, retain restoration points, and continue their lives beyond the world that discarded them. (Chapters 214–215, 222, and 229–231)

The Lord of Manseng and the middle-school seal

Ja's central authority is Manseng, an EX-rank flowering of Perfect Recollection. It records people, objects, and events in a glass garden, lets her replay them, and constructs increasingly accurate “if” worlds from understood cause and effect. She uses it to replace victims within their histories, personally experience their pain, and test the better life that might have followed had someone arrived in time. Her entire remembered existence therefore qualifies as trauma: even while smiling, she is perpetually watching, living, and apologizing for innumerable deaths. (Chapters 221–222)

This burden does not make her intervene freely. The Tower Master binds herself to rules against arbitrary authority, accepts valid skill activations even when they expose her, and often seals her power and memory so she can live as an ordinary person until an administrative contradiction requires her. One such sealed life is Ja Soo-jung, a third-year student at Shinseo Middle School in the side-story version of Gong-ja's world. She lives alone after her uncle's unsolved murder, tends the school's animals with Kim Yul, and shelters dangerous supernatural objects that would otherwise harm people. (Chapters 206–209)

The student has no conscious knowledge of the Tower, yet retains the same fundamental orientation. She sees through world-scale perception alteration, can see Bae Hu-ryeong, studies people with extraordinary precision, and responds sincerely to any request she can fulfill. Her apparent lack of barriers is not emotional emptiness. She regards people and even cursed objects as children in need of care, loves the city, the radio through an old window, and summer cicadas, and states plainly that she is happy in this life. (Chapters 206–209)

Gong-ja realizes the connection because Ja administered Kim Yul's trauma. When the stage lacked an intact memory of Kim's face, the Tower Master briefly awakened, supplied it from her own experience, accepted the clear, and sealed herself again rather than replace the victim with convenient false data. Gong-ja then asks the student to kill him, creating a conflict between her middle-school trauma and the Tower Master's deeper history. She agrees after hearing his reasoning, and the system manifests the Lord of Manseng, whose identical face and purple eyes reveal the authority hidden beneath the seal. (Chapters 208–210)

A world for every abandoned child

The Lord of Manseng warns Gong-ja not to enter her trauma and offers alternate rewards, but she will not abuse administrative authority to invalidate a legitimately activated skill. Inside her past, Gong-ja sees Ja's rise, Dragon conquests, Golden Rule, and endless simulations. She explains that she does not merely repeat her own life: through Manseng she lives the lives of the kingdom's dead and dying, suffers the wounds they suffered, and creates possible histories in which her presence allows them to survive. (Chapters 210–222)

Her salvation preserves people through counterfactual continuity. Children who died in a burning mansion live in alternate histories where Ja reached them, mature as her apostles, and may be summoned from Manseng as white butterflies. She intends to give a second life to everyone who dies, including people who demand revenge instead of happiness. This makes her refuge both merciful and coercive: she will not dismiss a blood-soaked wish simply because a cleaner answer would be easier for the administrator. (Chapters 230–232)

Ja tests Gong-ja with a hypothetical life in which she reaches Yoo Soo-ha first, guides him into becoming a hunter rather than a killer, and lets Gong-ja join them. The vision exposes Gong-ja's refusal to understand the man he killed, but he ultimately rejects a perfect replacement world and promises to change the real Yoo he remembers. Ja accepts the answer, leaves Yoo's possible second life to him, and presents the countless apostles she has saved as a challenge: Gong-ja may walk a different path, but he must build it through responsibility rather than condemnation alone. (Chapters 223–231)

After Gong-ja returns, the ordinary student remains a real continuation rather than an empty terminal. When he offers to give living bodies to the supernatural “children” she shelters, she thanks him but insists that each child decide for itself. She later releases Gong-ja, Raviel, and Uburka from the side story. This quiet identity demonstrates the choice that Manseng's immense simulations can obscure: even a benevolent creator must not substitute her own preferred salvation for the agency of the life receiving it. (Chapters 232–237 and 240–242)

Master of the pillars and Gong-ja's continuing challenge

Ja governs through pillars rather than personally performing every task. The Lady Who Walks Through the Mirage is her daughter and an intervening pillar who stages events, distributes skills, and administers special cases; she is not an alias or form of Ja. Other pillars manage domains such as the netherworld, secrets, beginnings, and time. Ja imposes rules on them, can punish abuse, convenes votes when their decisions are challenged, and limits Constellations from massacring hunters or acting outside stage conditions. (Chapters 194, 205, 252, and 328–330)

Her administrative restraint does not make her neutral toward every outcome. She grants skill rewards and card authorities within the Tower's rules, gives favored people high access, and repeatedly blesses Gong-ja when his choices fit the responsibility he claims. Yet she also allows human wishes to produce painful worlds and refuses to erase consequences merely because she foresees them. Her model is to preserve the person who chooses, give that person a world, and accept the grief or retaliation that follows. (Chapters 228–231, 250–252, 328–344)

When Gong-ja raises a vote of no confidence against the Wand of Ages, Ja treats the challenge as legitimate because it resembles her own path to power. She defends Gong-ja from unfair dismissal but makes the cost explicit: removing a pillar means offering a better system and assuming all of that pillar's work. After Gong-ja restores voices and bodies to dead souls so they can choose their own afterlives, Ja completes the vote, blesses him as the Sky That Gathers Screams, and installs him over the Tower's netherworld. (Chapters 360–362)

At the Chapter 400 gathering, Ja remains the active Tower Master. Gong-ja states that he still intends to challenge her position, and she tells him to take responsibility for the other pillars' territories before reaching her. She also grants Bae Hu-ryeong authority to leave, despite her possessive desire to keep every life inside the Tower, because she accepts that a warrior cannot be leashed. When Gong-ja thanks her as “Mother” for building a place where abandoned people could prove they were not born wrong, Ja lets her children depart with the wish that luck accompany them. (Chapter 400)

Appearance and personality

Ja appears as a beautiful, slight girl with naturally platinum-blonde hair, pale skin, and exceptionally clear eyes. Her empowered identity has deep purple eyes that seem to reflect or expose the heart of the person before her. In the sealed side story she wears a worn Shinseo Middle School uniform and carries an old briefcase; as a noble and Tower Master, she wears elaborate dresses and carries herself with the precision of someone whose pace never varies. (Chapters 206–210 and 215–217)

The middle-school Ja is usually expressionless, concise, and extraordinarily observant. She is not passive: she assesses danger, manages cursed beings with careful routines, cooks for guests, and can kill Gong-ja without hesitation after accepting the logic of his request. Her willingness to answer sincere requests is nearly absolute, which makes her compassionate and vulnerable at once. (Chapters 207–209)

The Lord of Manseng has the same face but a much more expressive manner. She smiles, curses, teases, seduces, speaks at length, and enjoys overturning another person's expectations. Her playfulness coexists with strict attention to procedure. She can offer enormous favors, but once a valid rule binds her, she treats circumventing it as an abuse of authority even when compliance will hurt her. (Chapters 209–222 and 229–231)

At her core, Ja treats all lives as children. She believes no one is wrong merely for being born, apologizes for suffering she was not present to prevent, and seeks to preserve even people whose wishes are destructive. This maternal possessiveness is both her virtue and her danger: she builds worlds for the abandoned but struggles to let anyone leave. Her final acceptance of Bae Hu-ryeong's departure and Gong-ja's challenge shows that care can include releasing a child rather than enclosing every possible life in her box. (Chapters 222–233 and 400)

Abilities and skills

Ja's Tower is constructed from interlocking authorities rather than one unlimited power. Her major documented abilities concern memory, causality, world simulation, embodiment, time, administration, and the distribution or modification of skills. She deliberately operates under rules, and the pillars perform many functions on her behalf.

Manseng and Perfect Recollection

Perfect Recollection is Ja's inherited Dragon-blood ability. It preserves everything she has perceived and lets her replay those memories with dreamlike immediacy. Its origin lies in the bloodline of an apostle of Hamustra, whose greater authority is the Pond of Accumulating Memories. Perfect Recollection is therefore the seed of Manseng, not an unrelated photographic-memory talent. (Chapter 222)

Manseng is an EX-rank glass garden created when Perfect Recollection overlaps with the Gold Dragon's Eyes, Ice River Dragon's Breath, and other acquired powers. It records people, objects, and events; reconstructs cause and effect; and simulates alternate histories with accuracy proportional to Ja's understanding. She can inhabit those histories, preserve counterfactual lives as apostles, and summon them through white-butterfly manifestations. (Chapters 222 and 230–231)

The skill's power is also its permanent cost. Ja replays vast numbers of deaths and inserts herself into the victim's place to experience what happened. Her simulations can give the dead a continuing world, but they do not change the original event into something that never occurred. Nor does her understanding guarantee that the person wants the future she imagines, which is why the sealed student asks each supernatural child to choose before accepting a living body. (Chapters 221–233)

Dragon authorities and world construction

The Earth Bone Dragon's Box archives the memories of living beings in a protected box. As long as the archive remains, Ja can create a body bearing those memories, allow it to accumulate experience, and update the archive if the body returns. A destroyed body cannot upload the memories gained after its last update, and only one body may operate from a stored memory at a time. Ja uses this principle as part of the Tower's outer structure, while Gong-ja later copies the authority for his own recreated family members. (Chapters 215, 229, and 233)

The Gold Dragon's Eyes and Ice River Dragon's Breath extend her perception beyond her own remembered life and enable Manseng's causal simulations. Combined Dragon powers also support the Tower's treatment of essence, time, memory, and reproduced worlds. The corpus establishes the integrated result more clearly than every individual component, so Ja should not be described as creating the Tower through Manseng alone or as possessing an undefined ability to do anything. (Chapters 214–215 and 220–222)

World construction lets Ja reproduce places from recorded lives, isolate their time from outside worlds, move people among the Tower's domains, and maintain restoration points. The Tower also contains afterlives suited to different souls and worlds in which displaced people can continue living without their former nationality or homeland. These are structured environments governed through skills, Constellations, and pillars rather than illusions with no consequences. (Chapters 206–209, 223–231, and 340–344)

Skill cards, rewards, and restrictions

Ja can expose, grant, copy, bless, and administer skill-card authorities within the Tower's system. She offers Gong-ja replacement skills when trying to dissuade him from viewing her trauma, presents her own abilities as possible random-copy rewards after he survives it, and later blesses his renamed powers and constellation title. Her authority reaches the rules surrounding cards, but she distinguishes a valid reward or modification from arbitrary intervention. (Chapters 210, 222, 229–231, 362, and 378)

She also sets systemic restrictions. Constellations are limited in how they may attack hunters, pillars must submit contested decisions to procedure, and challengers who remove an administrator inherit the associated work. These constraints are partly self-imposed: Ja has enough force to prevent Gong-ja from seeing her past, yet refuses because his skill activated legitimately. Her governance therefore depends on binding power to rules even when the ruler dislikes the result. (Chapters 210, 328–330, and 360–362)

Pillar administration and direct force

The Tower Master stands above six pillars, including her daughter, the Lady Who Walks Through the Mirage. She calls meetings, judges objections, orders punishments, assigns or removes portfolios, completes votes, grants access clearance, and appoints successors. Pillars retain distinct personalities and authorities; their powers and mistakes are not automatically Ja's own actions. (Chapters 194, 205, 329–330, and 360–362)

Ja is also personally formidable. She uses Dragon Pressure to immobilize Gong-ja, reads memories, follows accelerated consciousness, freezes or isolates scenes, and manifests through administrative contradictions. Her political past demonstrates command of magic, strategy, languages, and captured Dragon powers. The corpus emphasizes that her greatest force is coordinated authority—the Tower, its rules, and innumerable apostles—rather than a single preferred combat technique. (Chapters 209–222 and 230–231)

Power progression

Relationships

• Kim Gong-ja: Gong-ja forces a legitimate meeting by dying to Ja's sealed identity, survives her trauma, rejects the perfect life she offers, and becomes the person pursuing a parallel model of salvation through chosen happiness. Ja rewards and challenges him, eventually appointing him a pillar while accepting that he still aims to replace her.
• The Lady Who Walks Through the Mirage: Ja's daughter and an intervening pillar. The Lady conducts events, distributes rewards, and administers special cases under her own identity; Ja can discipline her and assign work. Their familial intimacy does not collapse them into the same being.
• Gu Won-ha: Ja's second adviser, vassal, and one of her closest supporters in the world before the Tower. Gu Won-ha documents the guilt and capability of the kingdom's rulers and gives Gong-ja the body through which he experiences Ja's past.
• Kim Yul: Ja tends the school animals alongside him in her sealed student life. When his trauma lacks reliable identity data, she supplies his true face from her memory and refuses to let administrative convenience erase the victim at the center of the stage.
• Hamustra: The Constellation from whom Ja's ancestral Perfect Recollection ultimately derives. His power provides the memory lineage that later flowers into Manseng, while he remains a distinct librarian rather than one of Ja's identities.
• Bae Hu-ryeong: A warrior who enters the Tower partly to meet its creator. Ja ultimately grants him the authority to leave even though she wants to keep the lives in her care, accepting his freedom over her possessiveness.

Items

Ja carries ordinary objects in her sealed student life, including a worn briefcase, notebook, pencil, and household tools. Her warehouse contains many dangerous supernatural objects placed under her custody so they cannot harm outsiders, but the corpus does not establish them as her personal weapons.

The Earth Bone Dragon's Box, Gold Dragon's Eyes, Ice River Dragon's Breath, and Manseng are skills or authorities rather than portable possessions. Likewise, the Tower is the world-system Ja constructed and administers, not an item she simply carries.