I Became the Magic Tower Master's Experimental Mouse - Chapter 83

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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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It was a sleep without bottom.
Pipi sank slowly into the darkness.
Strangely, it was not frightening. The deeper she sank, the warmer it became—as if she would meet good memories there.
* * *
“You there. On the ladder.”
Epiphany was shelving a book on the ladder when she looked down.
A young man she’d never seen before was standing there.
Snow-white hair. It was white hair that didn’t suit his slightly youthful face, as if he weren’t yet twenty.
Of course, thanks to his striking hair color, she recognized what he was.
‘So this is the Recuperating Guest staying at the Magic Tower for a while.’
She’d been told to avoid him as much as possible, since he was someone of high standing.
But even if she wanted to avoid him, he was standing right below her—what could she do?
“You shouldn’t be in here, sir.”
Epiphany was in the middle of cleaning the Old Storage Room.
Everything here had lost its usefulness long ago, yet none of it could be discarded—it was simply accumulated, and someone had to keep cleaning it endlessly.
“They kicked me out of the Experimental Building. Said my coughing was too loud.”
The young man grumbled and took a seat in a chair at one corner of the storage room. And then, true to his word, he coughed hard for quite some time.
‘He’s really frail, like I’d heard.’
He had the frame of a man, certainly, but he couldn’t hide his sickly appearance. His thin body looked as if it had never once held a sword.
“……Would you like some water?”
“A book would be better. Any one will do—the most boring one you have.”
“The most boring?”
“It helps me sleep.”
Epiphany couldn’t help but laugh at that very moment.
‘What an amusing person.’
She couldn’t quite tell if it was his words that were funny or his face.
* * *
Whether the young man liked the space or preferred Epiphany’s quiet company, he came to the storage room every day.
Really, there was no need for him to come daily, yet Epiphany too found herself going to the Old Storage Room just before the time he would unexpectedly appear.
‘This is pointless.’
He was a guest, and once Epiphany completed her task, she would have no reason to meet him again. Of course, he wasn’t essential to completing that task either.
And yet Epiphany found herself drawn to the Old Storage Room again and again, as if her body were pulled by a magnet.
‘No… I’m only using this as an excuse to memorize the blueprints one more time.’
But her heart knew far more accurately which one was the excuse.
“Are you sleeping?”
As she was tidying the storage room, Epiphany suddenly noticed the silence around her and peeked over the bookshelf.
Just then, a soft thump—a book falling from his lap. She walked carefully and picked it up.
And as she tried to slip away, a hot, large hand suddenly gripped her wrist tightly.
“Ah……!”
Only then did she realize that while concentrating on walking carefully so as not to wake the sleeping man, she hadn’t noticed the absence of her own breath.
Though he might have dozed for a moment, the young man had merely been pretending to sleep.
As an accomplished Assassin of the highest caliber, this was her first mistake in many years—not since she was very young.
Epiphany calmed her startled heart so it wouldn’t show and looked down at the young man’s hand.
“……Do you have a fever? Why is your hand so hot?”
Even as she spoke, something stirred quietly inside her.
Every time she faced the young man and talked with him, her insides rippled strangely like this.
Now it felt as if his hand gripping her wrist had been magnified five hundred times over—all her nerves converged on the wrist he was holding.
At her question, the young man smiled faintly.
“It’s always like this. It’s an aftereffect from being poisoned when I was young.”
Epiphany’s eyes, which had been about to say how envious she was of his high body temperature, trembled restlessly.
She stammered slightly as she answered.
“I… I naturally have a low body temperature, so I’m always cold. I get chilled easily.”
The young man smiled gently at her words and asked.
“Want me to warm you?”
“……That’s all right.”
Having overheard people’s conversations, she knew the young man was nineteen, but his smile now was as refreshing as carbonated water on a summer day—like that of a mere boy.
* * *
A few days later, a pair of Fur Gloves hung from the handle of the storage room door.
The gloves were slightly larger than Epiphany’s hands, as if chosen by eye, but the color suited her perfectly.
Epiphany seemed to know who had placed these gloves on her hands. She gripped them tightly in both palms and stood before the door for a long while.
* * *
One late afternoon, Epiphany dozed off without meaning to. She’d been staying up night after night memorizing the blueprints.
In the middle of organizing the shelves, she slumped across a table and fell into shallow sleep.
In her drowsiness, something like a blanket settled across her shoulders. And very close by, a low voice reached her ears.
“……Sleep well, Pipi.”
When she opened her eyes, the young man’s overcoat lay draped across her shoulders, and he sat composedly in a chair, reading a book.
“Pardon me—did you just call for me?”
“No, nothing at all.”
The young man answered with a secretive smile.
* * *
“What’s your dream, Liena?”
One afternoon, the young man asked her.
Liena. It was the false name Epiphany used within the Magic Tower.
She couldn’t answer. The Guild had never taught her such a word.
“Mine is to get a successor so I can pass off my work. Mundane, isn’t it?”
“……You don’t like your duties?”
“Well, I think everyone would prefer that outcome.”
The young man’s face looked somewhat bitter as he said it.
Epiphany didn’t know his station or his circumstances, so she couldn’t understand why he spoke that way.
“Still, lately I’ve discovered another dream.”
“What is it?”
“That’s a secret. It wouldn’t be too cowardly of me to keep one thing just for myself?”
His gaze was so tender as he said it that Epiphany, flustered, gripped the hem of her skirt tightly to hide her trembling hands.
‘A dream…… if it were simple enough…….’
It seemed her immediate wish was to tell the young man that her name was not Liena but Epiphany.
It was simple on its face, yet terribly difficult all the same.
“When winter ends, I’ll tell you my name too.”
The young man said it abruptly.
“Suddenly?”
“Once my recuperation is finished, I won’t be a guest anymore. Then…… well, I could introduce myself another way.”
“Another way?”
Epiphany tilted her head, not quite understanding.
“A secret.”
Even as Epiphany pouted, she began reckoning the calendar in her mind, counting down to winter’s end.
It was the first time in her life she’d ever had a day to look forward to.
* * *
The contact letter came on the day the first snow fell.
[This is your final directive order.]
The letter spelled out the purpose of everything she’d investigated over the past three months.
‘The target wasn’t assassination of key personnel within the Magic Tower?’
As she memorized the entire layout of the Magic Tower and identified the positions of guards and the effects of the magical wards, she had believed this was all preparation to assassinate someone important and find an escape route.
But the target was not a particular individual—it was the Magic Tower itself.
To destroy the Imperial Protection Magic Circle that used the Magic Tower as its anchor and foundation. That was her role.
[The execution date is Winter Solstice dawn, when magical power grows weakest.]
The Guild’s assassins never questioned their orders. They had no need to distinguish purpose. They were merely blades.
But that didn’t mean Epiphany was a fool.
‘If this were simply a matter of opposing the Imperial Court, there would be no reason to touch the protection ward.’
Epiphany realized the commission’s true purpose was not mere rebellion.
‘War…….’
There was only one opponent on the Eastern Continent the Western Continent Empire would wage war against.
She had been hired as the opening move in a continental conflict.
‘I…… if war breaks out, the Magic Tower will crumble…… and he……? So many people in the Empire will all…….’
They would be torn to shreds by the maelstrom of chaos.
Before such a vast war, a single individual was powerless.
Epiphany burned the directive order, as protocol demanded. And she burned the mission along with it.
‘I’ll probably die for this……?’
The Guild never forgave a traitor.
Without harsh fear as discipline, few would willingly take on the work of assassination, so the Guild always made an example of traitors through public execution.
And yet her deliberation was brief.
‘What I researched was a path to destroy the Magic Tower and escape. If that’s the case…….’
Then I could design a way to protect it instead.
Epiphany marked reinforcement points wherever the magic circle’s axis passed through, and wrote down methods to block invasion routes.
She planned to send an anonymous letter to the Tower Master soon enough.
That winter, at sixteen, Epiphany did work she had chosen for the first time in her life.
When the reinforcement list was about half complete, she even found herself imagining the days after the work was done.
‘Cedric? Julian? Noel?’
She didn’t know the man’s real name, but she imagined carefully calling out that name and seeing if it fit.
Yet the list never reached its destination.
Because a mechanism to prevent betrayal arrived before her plan could.
* * *
The eve of Winter Solstice.
The Guild did not trust Epiphany, whom they had raised themselves.
So they sent someone to watch her and assist with the deed.
While Epiphany spent time agonizing over how to eliminate her counterpart, the other person noticed something amiss first.
“I didn’t believe it when you said you might not go through with it. I never thought you’d be that foolish.”
It was a senior from the Guild, someone who had competed with her for first place in mission success rates. The cruel malice that had glowed in her eyes bent toward Epiphany for the first time, almost tenderly.
The moment the blade entered, the sound came before the pain.
“Pipi, Liena……! No……!”
The young man who grew dizzy too easily when excited was tumbling down the stairs in desperate haste.
His snow-white hair scattered through the darkness.
‘Don’t come.’
No voice came out.
She had wanted to tell him that her name wasn’t Liena…….
But to the very end, she thought only one thing.
I couldn’t protect it.
Not the Magic Tower, not the time in the Old Storage Room, not that person’s trivial and precious dream.
I couldn’t protect any of it.
* * *
The fourth night.
There were still two people beside the basket.
Claude, who could not sleep, and Cassian, who pinched his own cheeks and thighs to stay awake.
It was Cassian who noticed first.
“Pipi. Are you crying in your sleep……?”
The small dormouse’s closed eyes were damp with tears.
Claude gently wiped her eyes so the child wouldn’t be tormented by nightmares.
* * *
At the end of a long dream, I understood.
I came to destroy the Magic Tower, but in the end, I changed my mind.
The verdict I received in return was not guilty.
In this second life where I lost all memory, the fact that I repeat the same choices suggests that even when memory is erased, the choice itself remains.
‘……I want to see you.’
That name he said he would tell me when winter ended.
Longing lifted away the last veil of mist.
For the first time, the face that had been dozing with a book in my lap came into sharp focus.
I could know it without hearing the name.
……It was Cassian.

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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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