I Became the Magic Tower Master's Experimental Mouse - Chapter 82

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

Beneath the desk, clothes were piled like a nest. And nestled among them, a fist-sized lump of brown fur lay sleeping.
A plush tail draped over the ball-shaped body like a blanket.
“……Pipi.”
Though Claude had never seen a hibernating creature before, he recognized Pipi at once.
Even when shaken, she didn’t wake; her breathing was barely perceptible. When he placed her in his palm, she crumpled like bread dough.
Her small body was ice-cold.
Claude noticed his hand trembling as he held Pipi and drew a deep breath.
“Wake up, Pipi.”
No matter how desperately he called, Pipi did not wake.
A demi-human who remained asleep with her Form Transformation undone. A small body that slept as if death had taken her.
Inevitably, Claude’s thoughts turned to Cassian.
Cassian, who had been consumed by a toxin that gnawed at his Core and become an Awakened Beast.
‘A poison that targets the Core shouldn’t work on a demi-human. It shouldn’t.’
Even as he tried to convince himself otherwise, dread crept in. Without Pipi, he couldn’t handle that poison alone.
But if something else entirely had caused her to fall into this state, that possibility was equally terrifying.
“Pipi! Come on……!”
Cassian, who had come to share breakfast with him, froze the moment he spotted the small hibernating creature cradled in Claude’s palm.
The color drained from his face as he stood in the doorway.
“Pi…… Pi?”
This was the first time Cassian had ever seen Pipi in her demi-human form.
Had circumstances been different—had this been a choice to reveal herself to him as a companion—he would have been overjoyed. But this was an emergency.
“Come here.”
As Cassian approached, Claude bent forward to show him Pipi.
Cassian stared at the small creature in Claude’s palm, then placed a hand over his own chest.
‘……It’s quiet.’
During the kidnapping incident, Cassian had sensed Pipi’s emotions.
He thought he’d detected some intense feeling radiating from her as she was taken, but in the relief of her safe return, he’d let it slip from his mind without pressing the matter.
Now, reaching out again to feel that emotional resonance, he sensed only peace and tranquility—no negative feeling at all.
‘That must be Pipi’s emotion.’
Otherwise, there’s no way his own heart could be so calm in the face of this unprecedented crisis—a demi-human transformed, unconscious.
“……Pipi won’t die. She won’t.”
But what if Pipi had fallen into a Comatose State so profound that she could barely feel anything at all—like before?
Cassian couldn’t accept the reassurance his own senses offered, confusion overwhelming him, and tears spilled down his cheeks.
“Bedel!”
Unable to wait any longer, Claude called out for Bedel.
The Magic Tower was in upheaval within minutes.
Once in the Laboratory with Bedel, Claude mobilized every resource the Magic Tower had to examine Pipi’s condition.
The testing continued until noon.
He’d naturally expected some toxin to show up, but all results came back negative.
“……Again.”
“Tower Master, the third result is consistent, but……”
Across three tests, neither the poison that had consumed Cassian nor any toxin on the continent appeared in her system.
Three identical results were conclusive, yet the Tower Master couldn’t stop himself from ordering the test repeated, inefficient as he knew it to be.
He finally understood the desperation of nobles who would do anything if it meant saving their child’s life.
‘If it’s not poison. Then what can I possibly do for Pipi……’
The Tower Master, his face pale with anguish, ordered another test.
He wanted to run it until his mana was completely drained. To know exactly what had happened to his child.
Bedel, without complaint, prepared the fourth set of reagents.
But the result remained unchanged—only confirming that Pipi’s Comatose State stemmed not from external causes like poison, but from something else entirely.
Finally, he slammed his hand down on the examination table and ground out words through clenched teeth.
“Contact the Healing Tower. Bring Camila at once.”
As Bedel turned to follow the order, more instructions came.
“Tell her my child faces a crisis. If she dares delay or dilly-dally, I’ll kill her.”
* * *
Camila arrived in the afternoon.
Thanks to the urgent priority communication system, she’d raced over the moment word reached her.
“Where’s the patient!”
Camila burst through the door, shoved Claude aside with one hand, and rushed straight to the bedside.
She meticulously checked Pipi’s external responses, then examined her internal condition through mana sensing.
After a moment, she looked up and made her declaration.
“It’s Hibernation.”
Everyone in the room exchanged glances.
“Hibernation…… really?”
Liz asked, her voice trembling.
“Pipi did that once before. But she said she’d never slept that long before…….”
Cassian murmured. Of course, Camila had been there too, so she remembered everything.
“But it really isn’t an illness. Winter dormice are naturally hibernating creatures, so it’s perfectly normal for them to sleep through winter.”
At those words, Liz released a sigh of relief. But Camila’s expression remained clouded.
“……But that’s what troubles me. Why would she suddenly enter hibernation now, when she’s never done it her whole life?”
That was exactly what Claude had been thinking from the moment he heard the word “hibernation.”
“So what can we do about it?”
“Not much, really. There’s nothing we can do that would help. We just have to wait for her to wake up on her own.”
“When will she wake up?”
At Claude’s question, Camila shrugged.
“Pureblooded ones sleep through the entire winter. Half-bloods…… well. I’ve never experienced hibernation myself, which is why I thought I was half-blood, but now I can’t say for certain.”
“This is maddening…….”
“If a body that never hibernated suddenly started, something might have shifted and changed in her physiology.”
“Mm…….”
Claude rubbed his face with a dry hand.
While it was a relief that this was said to be normal, not knowing when she would wake was deeply unsettling.
‘What if there’s something wrong, and that’s why she fell into hibernation so suddenly?’
There had to be some reason why she’d never hibernated until now, at six years old.
If it was winter’s cold that triggered the biological signal to sleep, she would have felt far more cold back when she lived in a house far more dilapidated than the Magic Tower.
‘It might be nothing, but…….’
But as long as there was even a one-in-ten chance that something was wrong with his precious child, Claude was fated to worry endlessly.
“Claude. Keep her warm, and wait for her to wake. With a face like that, the guardian will collapse first.”
Claude turned the word over in his mind unfamiliarly.
‘Guardian.’
On paper, the two of them were still nothing to each other.
* * *
In Pipi’s room, as late autumn shifted into early winter, a stove had already been lit.
The small dormouse was laid to rest in a basket.
It was Cassian who had brought the basket—worried that if she fell asleep in bed, she might become smothered under the blankets.
Liz had objected, saying she wasn’t a newborn, but Cassian, insisting he was concerned, simply repurposed his own bed instead.
“This is warm. I made it.”
The bottom of the basket was lined with a fur blanket, cut somewhat crookedly but layered thickly and soft.
The fur had been taken from Cassian’s own wardrobe after he’d made the trip all the way to Behemoth’s Townhouse, and it was the warmest and fluffiest piece the boy owned.
He had cut it himself with shears and stitched the edges clumsily by hand, then carried away the garment with its ragged rectangular hole and enthusiastically arranged Pipi’s bedding.
“Don’t worry. I’ll look after her this time.”
Of course, the sleeping Pipi couldn’t feel worry at all, yet Cassian spoke solemnly even as his own face betrayed the deepest concern.
The child who had once been cared for inside that basket now sat watching over it.
Whenever he practiced with his sword, restless and anxious, he would carry the basket all the way to Claude’s office desk and then go to train, only to retrieve it afterward and set it back on Pipi’s nightstand.
Then he would pile a wooden sword and books nearby and sit beside her, like a sentinel.
“You’d better wake up. I’m going to make you pay a hundred times over for worrying everyone.”
Cassian made his threat, then drew the blanket a little tighter around the basket.
Though they called it natural, everyone was anxious.
So the floor around Pipi’s nightstand had filled with gifts that people from the Magic Tower had brought one by one.
“Wake up soon…….”
Cassian whispered this, and while Claude searched the Archive and Library Storage to learn more about hibernation,
Pipi lay deep in sleep.

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