I Became the Magic Tower Master's Experimental Mouse - Chapter 22

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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I’d had a feeling something like this might happen, but to actually wake up and start speaking…!
I sprang from my seat in a surge of emotion and examined Cassian’s face.
“You’re really awake, aren’t you?”
He had woken before, but his eyes had been somewhat clouded then.
By comparison, his golden eyes now gleamed with clarity and brightness.
‘Should I welcome him back? Ask how his body feels?’
Not knowing how to begin the conversation, I simply closed my mouth and gazed down at Cassian.
My feelings were a confused tangle—flustered, yet pleased that the mission had finally made some progress.
My tail thrashed about in dizzy circles, and Cassian’s gaze swept slowly across my form.
He frowned slightly while still lying down—
“You’re… a mouse?”
“…I’m sorry?”
“Yeah. You’re clearly… *cough*!”
Cassian’s throat, stiff from his long sleep, seized with a small cough, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
As if my being a mouse were somehow my fault.
‘Of course, there are a few rare people who dislike mouse demi-humans.’
For some reason, an image of filth had been imposed upon our naturally clean kind.
I wondered if he was one of those people and glared back at him.
I could tolerate many things, but not racial prejudice.
“Is there a problem with me being a mouse?”
I snapped at him indignantly.
Cassian went still for a moment.
“…Why did you turn red?”
“Because I’m angry!”
While I stamped my feet, Cassian’s gaze began to drift slowly across the surroundings.
The expression on his face was that of someone seeing an unfamiliar place.
It made sense—having struggled through such agony, he’d only caught brief, fleeting glimpses, so he couldn’t possibly have grasped the full picture of where he was.
“…Where is this place?”
“It’s the Poison Tower.”
“…The Poison Tower.”
Cassian echoed my words slowly, murmuring them to himself.
He stared blankly up at the ceiling for a moment, then lifted his hand to turn it back and forth, and tugged at his hair to check its color.
‘…He must be in shock.’
Cassian’s hair was now completely white.
The golden strands that had lingered at the tips had turned entirely silver during the rampage of poison coursing through him.
To wake from such prolonged agony only to find his very appearance transformed—the situation itself must feel terrifying.
I was already thinking I should console him if he broke down, when Cassian bit his lip and withdrew his hand from his hair.
Then he fixed me with a sharp gaze and asked.
“…What are you doing here? Are you some sort of maid tending to me? You’re far too small for that, though.”
“A maid? Hardly!”
I shot him a look that said he should know better and cried out.
“I’m a professional!”
Maids were certainly professionals in household management, but I took real pride in my work.
I was a Poison Immunity bearer, no less! The tower’s sole experimental subject!
“And it was me who saved you in the first place!”
I crossed my arms and lifted my chin.
Cassian’s brows furrowed slightly.
“…A mouse saved me?”
“Yes! Without me, you’d already be in a tomb!”
I answered with my chest puffed out, and Cassian’s face grew noticeably more rigid.
Complex emotions rippled through his golden eyes.
I understood in an instant what emotion that was. Humiliation.
The heir to Behemoth, the continent’s foremost Ancient Beast clan, owed his life to a Mouse Demi-human—one of nature’s lowest prey animals.
That fact was clearly trampling directly upon his pride.
‘So pride cleanses poison, does it?’
I shrugged and, still holding his hand with one hand, made a half-cup gesture beneath my chin with the other.
No matter how much he disliked it, I was the one who saved him. Me!
“…No.”
Huh?
“……It wasn’t you who saved me. I endured it.”
Cassian’s cheeks swelled like a pufferfish.
His pride ran so deep that the moment humiliation struck, he fled into denial.
Days of daily effort, and now it was being dismissed—I felt a flicker of anger myself.
“What do you mean? Who’s been coming here every day, holding your hand and performing Detoxification on you?”
“Hand, the hand…….”
Cassian mumbled something incoherent.
Since I could barely hear him anyway, I simply ignored it and pressed my case.
“Sorry? Care to say that again?”
“……That was just… it only helped a little.”
Cassian’s eyes darted away.
Seeing those puffed-out round cheeks, heat rose in my chest.
‘Calm down. Just breathe. This brat is only nine years old. I’m sixteen!’
Even though Cassian seemed to be looking down on me in this six-year-old body, I had to show some restraint as the older one…….
“……Why would I ever owe anything to a mere mouse.”
There he goes again with the species insult!
“After I just saved you—”
I reached out to knock Cassian on the head and pull my hand back, intending to just let him go back to sleep.
‘……Huh?’
But my hand wouldn’t slip free. Cassian’s grip held mine fast.
His mouth denied my efforts, yet his hand refused to let go.
‘……What is this.’
I’d held that hand every day for several days now, but he’d never gripped back with such… intention.
Something in me went soft.
‘What’s the point in fighting with a child who just woke up.’
I sighed deeply and tried to slip my fingers free.
“Please. Let go of my hand.”
“……I don’t want to.”
“Pardon?”
“……I said I don’t want to.”
Cassian turned his head away as he answered.
Heat was rising in him again—his whole upper body flushed crimson from his fingertips up.
“……Really now. Let go. I need to report to the Poison Tower’s master. We have to tell her that you’ve woken up as soon as possible.”
This time I offered a more compelling reason to escape.
Cassian hesitated for a moment at those words, but in the end, he still wouldn’t release my hand.
“……Will you come back?”
“What?”
“Will you come back to me?”
Unlike his earlier stubborn bluster, Cassian’s eyes now trembled with something fragile and clinging.
He was afraid I wouldn’t return after going to make my report.
‘Well, it is a cold, eerie underground chamber with strange contraptions. Most people would find it frightening.’
While I was observing him quietly, Cassian suddenly tried to sit up and follow me.
The way he gripped my hand—as if it were a lifeline—was……
……something.
‘……No. I was about to go soft again.’
I shook my head.
My role was only Detoxification, not childcare!
“I will come back. It’s my duty to complete your Detoxification anyway.”
“……Then I should come with you.”
“No one knows you’re here. If word gets out that Behemoth’s heir has been poisoned, it will be a disaster. So you can’t follow me upstairs.”
At my words, Cassian’s shoulders sagged, his eyes losing their fragile, wavering light.
As if replacing a mask, his eyes regained their composure, and his hand slowly fell away from mine.
‘Now that’s the duke I remember.’
Recalling the face I’d seen before the regression, I turned my back on Cassian.
“……Come back soon.”
And mercifully, thanks to the urgent command that followed at my back, I was able to smile without being caught.
* * *
Overnight, I had acquired a fiancée.
After being poisoned at some unknown point, Cassian’s memories had fractured.
The agony that seemed to melt his very insides made it impossible for him to live a normal life.
Screams, parents, wailing, butler, physician.
Each time he opened and closed his eyes, the world around him shifted—
And at some point, even the space itself began to change.
Of course, thrashing against agony so maddening that it threatened his sanity, he couldn’t perceive his surroundings with any clarity……
But there were moments, rare and fleeting, when the pain would ease, and in those moments he always saw a pair of brilliant crimson eyes.
Eyes that blazed with a shimmering, vivid life force.
Cassian found himself desperate to grasp the small girl who possessed those eyes.
Because it seemed that holding her would make the suffering gradually recede.
And after enduring a pain so severe he thought surely he was dying……
“Gasp—I’ve awakened……!”
Cassian finally managed to open his eyes properly and come to.
‘So small. Her ears keep twitching.’
The child with those crimson eyes he’d finally come face to face with bore a pair of large ears perched atop her head.
Round and enormous eyes shone with wonder and curiosity.
With each movement of the girl, her soft, pale brown hair swayed like delicate threads.
‘Bewildering……’
Cassian forced himself to survey the room and take stock of his own condition, anything to stop his eyes from constantly drifting to the girl’s ever-changing expressions.
After such a long illness, awakening brought nothing but astonishment.
He was amazed at how light his body had become, amazed at having finally lost the hair that was the very emblem of his house—but chief among these discoveries was—
“Who was it that came every day and held my hand and performed Detoxification for me?”
The grim reality that his hand had been held by the girl every single day.
“My hand, my hand……”
Having allowed an unrelated woman to hold his hand for such an extended period, he was now bound without recourse to become engaged to her.
‘Mother was quite clear about it. That I should only hold hands and exchange lips with Mother and my wife. That if I carelessly hold a woman’s hand, I must marry her.’
Cassian fell into despair.
The heir to House Behemoth, forced to marry a Mouse Demi-human.
He should have made an advantageous marriage for the sake of his house……
Though it went against his will entirely, according to the sacred marriage rite, he had already pledged his hand to this Mouse Demi-human girl.
‘I must take responsibility for her……’
Or else be ordered to do so.
For fear that his betrothed might flee while engaged to him, Cassian extracted a firm promise that she would return before finally releasing her hand.
‘Having someone chattering at my side might not be so bad after all.’
Lying in bed, Cassian pondered his betrothed, who had fluttered away—
And realized he didn’t even know her name.
He should have asked long ago, but for some reason, he found himself defenseless against her.
Perhaps it was due to his father’s teachings, that a man must always dedicate himself to those he loves and holds dear.
‘Is she really a mouse…… What kind of mouse has such a predatory air……’
When she returned, he’d ask for her name first.
He couldn’t possibly live not knowing the name of his betrothed.
Cassian’s eyes drifted subtly toward the door.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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