I Became the Magic Tower Master's Experimental Mouse - Chapter 4

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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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‘Mm…….’
The sunlight touching my eyes was far too warm.
I usually woke before dawn, well before the sun rose fully, yet here was sunlight streaming in.
“Oh.”
The moment understanding dawned, I jolted upright.
‘I overslept.’
Soft, quilted fabric brushed against my skin.
Where I lay was not a hard wooden bed or floor, but a cushioned mattress.
‘Right—I’m in the Magic Tower.’
Specifically, in a Guest Chamber on the third floor.
Yesterday’s shock at being shown to the room came flooding back.
And no wonder—I’d never seen such opulence in my life.
A broad bed stood draped with lace canopy.
The only flaw I could find was that every piece of furniture towered too high for a child to use comfortably.
‘A room like this for an experimental subject?’
During my time in the Assassins’ Guild, I couldn’t have dreamed of such luxury.
A chamber fit for the wealthy—the sort meant for assassination targets, not mere killers—was before me, and I felt oddly diminished by the thought.
Knock, knock.
“Pipi? Are you awake?”
Liz’s voice came from beyond the door.
“Yes! I’m awake!”
I answered hurriedly and climbed down from the bed.
My skin seemed to stick to the quilted fabric, and I had to force my legs off the plush mattress—it clung to me in a way that made leaving it difficult.
“Sleep well? It’s time for breakfast.”
“Breakfast? What time is it?”
“Nearly nine. The Tower Master is waiting.”
Late on the very first day…….
I sighed inwardly while Liz yanked clothes from the wardrobe and I dressed hastily.
“Are we going to the Dining Hall now?”
“No. You’re the Tower Master’s special experiment, remember? He doesn’t eat in the common Dining Hall.”
I tilted my head in confusion at this, but Liz seemed to have no time for explanation and closed her mouth.
She practically carried me to the Laboratory door and left me there before disappearing.
“You’re late.”
I carefully opened the door, and the Tower Master’s cold voice made my shoulders flinch.
“I apologize…….”
There was no excuse to be made—the fault was clearly mine.
“An experiment requires Variable Control. You must eat at the same time each day.”
His gaze shifted to the clock, now a few minutes past nine.
“I hadn’t told you beforehand, so I won’t hold it against you this time.”
I quickly sat on the sofa across from him, reading his mood.
A generous breakfast was laid out at my place.
Crispy bacon, toasted bread spread with ruby-red jam, soup rich with corn and mushrooms, a fruit salad crowned with nuts, and warm milk.
Before the generously laden plates sat only a single spoon and fork.
“Why are you staring blankly? Eat.”
“This is… quite a lot, isn’t it……?”
At my hesitant protest, the Tower Master crossed his arms and spoke.
“If you’re to become my finest experiment, you’ll need to eat at least this much.”
He gave a scoffing laugh and pushed the plate closer to me.
“Height: eighty-six centimeters. Weight: thirteen kilograms. Severe Malnutrition.”
“Is that so?”
“Well below standard. That’s why I had to devise a nutritional plan myself.”
He unfolded a small Notebook as he spoke.
The cover read: .
“Troublesome as it is, since you’ve been taken on as a subject, there’s no helping it.”
A growth log bearing my name. It seemed he intended to employ me for quite some time.
“May I see it too?”
At my question, his brow furrowed slightly.
He seemed to think it was unnecessary interest for a mere experiment to take.
“I need to understand my own path of growth if I’m to approach this work earnestly.”
When I ventured this careful objection, the Tower Master apparently found merit in it, for he wordlessly produced a notebook and held it out to me.
‘Let me see…….’
The first page bore a schedule written in neat columns.
9 a.m. breakfast, 10 a.m. exercise, 11 a.m. light meal and shower, 12:30 p.m. Poison Experiment, 1 p.m. lunch…….
“Five meals a day. Seriously.”
I felt the weight of it and exhaled without thinking—a small, helpless sigh.
“Of course. In your current condition, we won’t get valid experimental data.”
The Tower Master spoke with finality.
“You’ll need to reach at least standard body weight first. Until then, Poison Experiments are out of the question.”
“Out of the question? No Poison Experiments?”
I blurted out in alarm.
If that were true, what would be the point of my being here?
“Minimum one month. Conditioning and basic stamina only.”
“But I’m ready to begin experiments right now——”
At that, the Tower Master let out a sharp, dismissive laugh.
His gaze swept over me from head to foot.
“Look at your forearms. Thinner than chopsticks. You expect to conduct experiments in that state?”
I had nothing to say. I clamped my mouth shut and gulped down my milk.
“When, then, will I start the actual experiments?”
“When you’ve reached peak condition.”
“And that would be when?”
“I’ll judge that.”
With that, the Tower Master took back the experimental notebook.
I grumbled and bit into a piece of bread.
‘……This is actually good.’
The bread was wonderfully soft and sweet.
The soup was rich and savory, the bacon crisp yet perfectly salted.
‘They eat like this every day?’
During my time with the Assassins’ Guild, all I ever had was hard bread and thin gruel.
If I’d known such food existed…….
‘I should have volunteered as an experiment subject long ago!’
While I was regretting the years I’d lost, the Tower Master pointed at my plate and said:
“Eat every last bite.”
He watched my mouth with such intensity it felt like surveillance.
“My test subject must be nothing but the best.”
That remark kindled something unexpected in me—a competitive fire.
‘Fine. I’ll become the finest test subject there is.’
I gripped the fork and spoon tightly in both hands and ate with determined focus.
By the time I’d finished breakfast with genuine enthusiasm, my belly felt utterly full.
“Now it’s time to exercise.”
The Tower Master led me personally to the Back Yard behind the Magic Tower.
“What kind of exercise?”
“Conditioning drills. Start with running.”
The Magic Tower was large, but since it stood within the city, I wondered if there’d be enough open space to run——.
“When was this installed?”
The narrow back yard contained exercise equipment.
Or more precisely: a large, round running wheel.
‘Talk about commitment to the concept.’
He’d called me a test subject, and apparently decided last night to build a running wheel for one.
“Last night.”
“You built it yourself, Tower Master?”
“……You ask too many questions. Just run for ten minutes.”
The Tower Master suddenly busied himself looking elsewhere.
I couldn’t help but smile. I moved toward the running wheel to climb on.
“Wait. Change your shoes first.”
From nowhere, he produced a pair of shoes that fit my feet perfectly.
The shoes he handed me were a perfect fit. It seemed the Tower Master had prepared many things while I slept last night.
One lap, two laps…….
As I started running inside the enormous wheel—large enough for an actual human, not just a rodent—I found myself breathless within moments.
‘I’m really weak.’
Back when I was an assassin, I could have run a hundred laps without breaking a sweat.
“If it’s too hard, you can slow down.”
The Tower Master spoke from beneath the shade of a tree, watching me.
“I’m fine! I can do this!”
Irritated by his patronizing tone, I shot him a sharp look, but then stubornly kept my pace and finished the full course.
As I collapsed, panting, the Tower Master handed me a towel and water.
“You really are weak.”
“Huff… huff….”
“Tomorrow, run for eleven minutes.”
“What?”
“You’ll add one minute each day. The short-term goal is to build up to running for a full hour straight.”
The plan seemed absurdly simple, and my eyes widened in surprise.
* * *
Brunch after exercise tasted like honey.
Then came the next item on the schedule.
Originally, this was supposed to be the time for Poison Experiment in the Tower Master’s laboratory.
But since I wasn’t yet in condition to conduct experiments, it was replaced with a tour of the Poison Manufacturing Workshop.
It was so the people at the Magic Tower could be introduced to me.
‘Tch. It’s the first day, so I suppose it can’t be helped.’
Grumbling that a highly skilled person like him was wasting time on such simple work, the Tower Master left me in Liz’s care.
“This is the Poison Manufacturing Workshop where our mages work. The apprentice mages use the area near the door, and the regular mages work deeper inside.”
Liz, called away from her own work to take charge of me, explained as she opened the door.
“I see….”
The workshop was far larger than I’d vaguely imagined.
The walls were lined with bottles of reagents in every color of the rainbow, and complex distillation apparatus filled the central area.
Several mages were busy preparing poisons at their respective workbenches.
“Just look around. Don’t touch anything carelessly.”
Liz warned me, but my attention had already fixated on something else.
‘The smell….’
Dozens of poison scents mingled together, but I could distinguish each one.
“That workbench over there….”
I instinctively pointed to one corner.
“Something smells wrong about it.”
“Huh? Wrong, you say?”
Liz tilted her head in confusion.
“Isn’t that the wrong way to add it?”
It was Explosive Poison—something I’d smelled a few times before.
‘I’m no poison expert, but….’
I’d used it a handful of times on missions and picked up a few basic facts about it.
It had the property of repelling other substances, which gave it its explosive nature, and its toxicity was strong enough to classify it as a deadly poison.
When mixed with a specific catalyst, the explosion’s intensity would change—and in this room, I caught the scent of that catalyst wafting from the same spot.
“Oh! Who was handling that?”
Liz quickly rushed to the workbench and found the worker.
“It’s Ollie’s bench, isn’t it? If Pipi hadn’t caught it, this could’ve been a disaster! Even small quantities of explosives need careful handling!”
“I-I’m so sorry….”
A boy who’d been loitering in front of a glass cabinet crammed with reagent bottles hurried over and bowed his head in alarm.
Liz, who’d been kind to me, now treated the boy who’d nearly made a grave mistake completely differently—scolding him harshly.
The other mages watching this exchange murmured among themselves quietly.
“How did she know just from smelling it?”
“You can tell them apart by smell? Isn’t that genius?”
Then someone spoke in a cold voice.
“Hmph. It was probably just luck.”
It was a boy wearing an apprentice mage’s badge.
With brown hair and sharp features, he looked considerably older than me.
“Martin.”
One of the mages called his name.
“What would a little kid like her possibly know?”
Martin spoke with a mocking sneer.
A placard reading “First Place This Month” was attached to his workbench.
I looked up at him.
‘Ah, this type.’
I’d seen plenty of them back in my assassin days.
Martin’s eyes brimmed with arrogance.
“It’s not a coincidence. I can distinguish any poison by scent.”
“……What?”
“I can identify Class 2 Poison by smell, and I can tell what ingredients went into it.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing. You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“Just because you can’t do something doesn’t mean nobody else can.”
As I spoke with confidence, Martin’s face flushed crimson.
“A fresh recruit daring to be insolent……”
“Martin, enough.”
Liz stepped between us as we glared at each other.
“She’s not an apprentice mage. She belongs to the Tower Master.”
“……My apologies.”
The moment the Tower Master was mentioned, Martin reluctantly bowed his head.
But the glint in his eyes as he looked at me was anything but mild. He clearly felt I’d damaged his pride.
‘That bastard’s plotting something.’
Come to think of it, for a poison tower, things had been far too smooth until now.
Was this finally when I’d stumble into a world of intrigue and lethal plots?!
Martin turned sharply away from me and, in one fluid motion, slipped the Handkerchief Dusted with Silver Powder into his pocket.
‘……What was that?’
That was the Catalyst for the reagent I’d just blocked.
Without thinking, the fine hairs on my ears stood on end.

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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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