I Became the Magic Tower Master's Experimental Mouse - Chapter 31

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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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‘Pip.’
Someone seemed to be calling me by that name.
The voice was desperately urgent.
‘No one’s ever called me that before, and yet…….’
Pip, pip, pip.
Each time I heard the phantom voice, the headache grew worse.
“Ow, ow…….”
When a sharp cry escaped me at the throbbing pain, Cassian’s brow—lying beside me—twitched slightly.
Afraid he’d wake after just falling asleep, I pressed my fingers to my temples and clamped my mouth shut.
‘I don’t need to chase after lost memories anyway…….’
I was living a new life now. What did memories from before I died matter so much?
When I rolled myself into a tight ball with frustration, both the headache and the phantom voice faded completely moments later.
‘……Let me just sleep. If this happens again…….’
Then maybe I’d go ask the Magic Tower’s master for help.
Claude wouldn’t refuse to help me…….
In that instant, something struck me cold. I clapped my hand over my mouth and fled to my room.
‘I’m insane!’
An Experimental Subject hearing phantom voices—what employer would possibly approve of that?
I’d only just met him. How had I come to trust Claude this much?
I don’t know anything about him…….
The fact that I’d let my guard down so completely felt like proof of my weakness, and it left me feeling suffocated.
“I hate this…….”
Only after forcing myself to regain composure could I finally lower my shoulders from where they’d crept up with tension.
* * *
Claude sat gazing down at a notebook spread across his desk.
His eyes had lingered for several minutes on the page titled “[Experimental Subject Weekly Schedule ver. 5]”.
‘Should I add another block of free time.’
Pen in hand, he’d been deliberating, when he suddenly became aware that he was spending considerable time on something trivial.
‘……Why am I doing this.’
Managing the Magic Tower, special commissions for the master, personal research—all of it.
His time was more precious than gold.
The Noble Council’s pressure to marry quickly and produce an heir had even retreated after they saw his actual living schedule.
Because aside from a mere few hours of sleep, his time was devoted entirely to work and research.
He had no business deliberating whether an Experimental Subject deserved an extra hour of rest or a weekend outing.
Ever since those insects—no, vermin—had invaded, the apprentices had grown inexplicably downcast.
Though he did want to see that bright smile again…….
‘No. A well-rested test subject yields stable results.’
So schedule management was simply a matter of efficiency.
After tidying up his reasoning that way, he used a red pen to insert more rest periods into the timetable.
He planned to polish it into a clean sixth version of the chart and notify the Experimental Subject afterward.
‘Once I send Cassian back to the Duke’s Estate, I’ll need to take her somewhere nice.’
For now it was too risky to let her out because of Cassian’s security.
This much surely counted as looking after the Experimental Subject with balanced judgment.
Knock, knock.
The sound of knuckles on the door came suddenly.
“Master Claude, it’s Bedel.”
Claude slipped the schedule into a drawer and set down his pen.
“Come in.”
Bedel entered and got straight to business.
“Both bodies have been disposed of. We couldn’t identify them, but their immediate suicide suggests they were systematically trained.”
“That figures. Probably Assassin’s Guild. Did the poison sac remain?”
“It dissolved and seeped away.”
“Then it’s definitely Assassin’s Guild. The Information Guild doesn’t use that method of suicide.”
Still, the Assassin’s Guild had many branches, and the lack of identifying evidence made it impossible to trace the mastermind directly.
It was the answer he’d anticipated anyway. What he actually wanted to know was something else entirely.
After a moment’s thought, what came from his lips was an order that skipped several steps ahead.
“Look into the Duchess’s state of health.”
“Pardon? Should we not continue investigating the Assassin’s Guild?”
Bedel’s expression shifted to visible bewilderment at the abrupt change in direction.
Only now did Claude realize he hadn’t shared the Poisoned Letter that the Experimental Subject had discovered—the one from the Duchess—with Bedel. At the time, Bedel had been occupied with other matters, so Claude had entrusted it to another researcher.
He needed to explain the situation; otherwise, Bedel might gather intelligence in the wrong direction entirely.
“That direction will be difficult to investigate. How do you think they learned Cassian was in this tower?”
Bedel paused briefly before answering.
“Most likely, a leak from within the Duke’s Estate. The heir’s addiction is a family shame, after all. Next would be the Magic Tower itself, but…… only you, myself, and the Experimental Subject know of this young lord’s existence.”
The matter required such strict confidentiality that when Cassian was brought from the Duke’s Estate to the Magic Tower, it was Bedel who had been sent by the Tower’s side.
Among the researchers, he handled external affairs most skillfully and was the most trustworthy.
“A third possibility.”
“A third one?”
“Someone may have been watching Cassian from the very beginning.”
Bedel’s expression hardened.
Claude tapped the desk lightly and continued.
“If nothing leaked from the Estate or the Tower…… then the enemy has been watching where he moves the entire time.”
“……If someone knows Cassian would suddenly move somewhere, they’re almost certainly the one who poisoned him.”
Bedel, who had fallen silent for a moment, bit his lip as he spoke.
“Do you believe the assassin and the one who used the poison are working together?”
“It’s only a hypothesis. A hypothesis is always…….”
“……in need of verification.”
It was a phrase Claude had drummed into his researchers since their apprentice days.
If you decided on something from the start, the experiment could be unconsciously manipulated or go completely off course.
“Some time ago, I learned that the Duchess had been poisoned. Dave is researching it.”
“If it’s Dave, he’ll certainly bring results.”
“Yes. So you look into the Duke’s Estate’s recent movements. Particularly the Duchess’s health condition.”
Claude then instructed Bedel to summon Dave and waved his hand in dismissal.
Bedel bowed and withdrew.
* * *
Not long after, the one who came to find Claude was a far different sight from Bedel from the moment he entered.
Dave, poking his head in through the doorway crack, immediately hunched his shoulders the instant his eyes met Claude’s.
“Y-you c-called for me…….”
Shaggy bangs hanging in his face, a sickly pallor, lips twitching nervously.
Unreliable in appearance, yet Claude silently gestured for Dave to approach.
“How far along is your analysis of the poison in the letter I gave you?”
“W-well, th-that is, uh…….”
Dave fidgeted with the report in his hands, cold sweat beading on his skin.
He was always like this whenever he stood before people. His lips twisted oddly as his speech continued to stammer.
Rather than rush him, Claude waited with stubborn patience for the words to come.
And then.
“W-well, it was really fascinating material!”
Dave’s voice transformed entirely.
“Shh, speak quietly.”
“I separated the letter into fine pieces, isolated the pulp and trace amounts of poison, and examined the composition. It was incredibly difficult, but I managed it!”
Claude tried to silence him as his voice grew too loud, but Dave’s eyes had already begun to gleam.
The timid, twisted face contorted in a completely different way now—wild with excitement, almost manic.
“At first I thought it was simply a chronic accumulative type, right? But there’s an odd molecular bonding at the terminal of the structure. It’s a form that doesn’t normally appear in ordinary poisons, so I compared it against every poison in the storage vault—”
He had already unfolded the report and rushed right up to the desk.
“That poison! The one I named N001! It came from the same source. The way the poison operates within the body seems different, but the original is definitely one and the same. Such precise modification is not something anyone can do. This was deliberately designed—”
“Dave.”
“……Yes.”
The moment his elaborate explanation cut off, as if the controlling thread had snapped, Dave’s mouth clamped shut.
His shoulders sagged utterly, as if he’d been struck down to the floor itself.
“The essentials only.”
Dave gripped the report with both hands and summarized crisply.
“……The Duchess was poisoned with what is likely a derivative of N001.”
N001 was a poison Claude had named himself.
New poison, number one.
Among countless poisons that had passed through the Magic Tower’s vast history, it was one that displayed an entirely different pattern, warranting a separate classification designation.
This N001 was none other than Cassian’s poison.
He had personally collected the toxic miasma Cassian emitted and stored it in the poison vault.
‘So mother and son were poisoned with the same toxin.’
Yet if it were the same poison, why was Cassian dying while the Duchess lived untreated?
Claude’s instincts sharpened.
Until now, he had found no way to determine how Cassian had been poisoned, let alone the method behind it.
But hearing the words “derived poison,” a new hypothesis crystallized in Claude’s mind.
Certain poisons only became toxic when combined with others.
And certain organisms could serve as vectors, spreading poison between hosts.
‘……A vector.’
What if one of them had been the vector—the one who transmitted the poison to the other?
It was merely speculation, yet Claude felt certain his intuition was correct.
‘If the Assassin’s Guild was behind this, there would be a client.’
He’d stumbled into a troublesome affair.
Claude’s brow furrowed as he gestured to Dave.
“Your work is done. Leave it be.”
“But—! It’s far too fascinating to abandon now—”
“N001 should have been stored in a research facility accessible only by my authorization.”
“……Yes, of course.”
When Claude pointed out that Dave had handled the poison without permission, the younger man deflated, nodding submissively.
His obsession with research sent him into spirals like this so often that he had no salary left to dock.
“Get out.”
“Yes…….”
Dave nodded timidly again and shuffled toward the door with leaden steps.
Just then, a knock sounded at the door.
‘Did someone hear us from outside?’
Claude’s face turned glacial.
But then, through the gap in the opening door, he caught sight of a tail swishing lazily—and his expression softened at once.

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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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