My Husband Is Not the Magic Tower Master - Chapter 2

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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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Episode 2

In my past life, I was a university student working three jobs to save my family from drowning in debt.
To cut straight to it: I failed to save them.
I died in an instant—a fall from a construction site while carrying bricks.
It didn’t hurt, particularly.
Rather than the sensation of dying, it felt like hurtling through space at tremendous speed.
A violent wind rushed past, and in the moment I thought, ‘So this is how I hit the ground,’ instead came a strangely soft sensation.
Oddly enough, it was like being caught in someone’s embrace.
And when I slowly opened my eyes….
“You’re awake, Roze?!”
Someone was holding me tight, sobbing uncontrollably.
I blinked in confusion, looking around, and saw a small girl clinging to me as she cried.
Cotton-candy pink hair and skin fair as sunlight—couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen.
Startled, I hesitated, and only when I heard her name did I understand.
“You’re….”
“It’s me, Elline!”
Where I was.
“You’re not hurt, right? You’d recognize my face right away?”
“You’re… Elline?”
“Yes, Elline! Your closest friend in the whole world—’Elline Ross’!”
The only daughter of the Baron Ross Household.
The female protagonist of the romance fantasy novel I’d read: .
“And me?”
“You’re Roze—’Roze Stein’!”
The supporting friend role.
“Right. That’s me.”
I was basically the punching bag here.
In a flash, like pages turning through my mind, Roze’s entire story scrolled past.
With each scene that brushed past, my mouth grew heavier. By the final chapter, I found myself tearing at my own hair.
“Roze? Am I really Roze Stein?”
“What’s wrong, Roze? Did you hit your head…?”
“When does the original story start? The protagonists’ age…?”
Elline, the female protagonist, enters the Magic Tower as an Earth Mage at age twenty and begins a romance with Lucas, the crown prince and male protagonist.
The real story hasn’t even begun yet.
“This is insane!”
Counting the time I had left, I let out a scream.
Me!
Six more years of being dragged around!
* * *
Six years passed faster than I expected.
When I opened my eyes in the novel’s world, it was right after the fall from the window.
Right—Roze Stein in was quite a pessimistic girl.
Born into a wealthy Count’s household, her body was too frail to indulge in all the luxuries her station afforded.
‘You had it rough too, I suppose.’
But becoming a villain is a choice.
Roze, who fell ill frequently as a child, had always sought to soothe her despair through twisted methods.
For instance, by witnessing someone else’s unhappiness firsthand with her own eyes.
Whenever the Baron and Baroness Ross came calling in hopes of impressing the Count’s household—under the guise of being the “one and only friend of this delicate noble daughter”—and offered up their only child, Elline, to her, Roze felt nothing but delight.
She treated the girl who visited her each day like nothing more than a plaything.
Despite calling it friendship, despite Elline’s genuinely kind heart that looked after her so lovingly, Roze spent every day finding new, corrupt ways to torment her.
One day, a cold rebuff at the door; another, puppet games; on days when nothing suited her, she’d fabricate all manner of faults and pin them on the girl.
Roze hated Elline while simultaneously envying everything she possessed.
Her healthy body, her unguarded nature, her lovely and graceful appearance—all of it.
‘And more than that, she wanted to control her.’
By the time Roze turned twenty, she’d even become engaged to the crown prince Elline loved.
A villain custom-made to complete Elline’s suffering, one might say.
I was certain that the reason I’d tumbled from Roze’s body out the window was no different from this.
Doubtless she’d wanted to pin some flimsy accusation on Elline.
Not from the topmost floor like me, but merely a two-story fall. How pathetically trivial this harassment was.
“What a wretch.”
Someone worked themselves to bone and still lost their life for it.
“Hmm? What did you say, Roze?”
“Nothing. Just that you’ve been through so much.”
From that day forward, I resolved to show Elline small kindnesses.
I wasn’t the sort to torment a kindhearted girl under the guise of character setting—my conscience wouldn’t bear it.
Fortunately, Roze was scheduled to exit within a year of the original story’s start.
After a quick trip to the altar with the male lead, I would reclaim my freedom.
“I’m going to become independent.”
I’ll exercise. I’ll find employment.
I’ll build up this frail constitution that seems liable to scatter like paper at the slightest breeze, and I’ll graduate from being a sheltered noblewoman to take on a respectable profession.
For that, I needed Elline’s help a little.
‘We’re bound to part ways regardless—wouldn’t mutual benefit be wiser?’
You grow unharmed, and I grow strong.
Until then, let’s stay friends.
“From tomorrow onward, I won’t be gloomy. I’ll rise each morning and exercise earnestly, eat three proper meals a day, and every afternoon I’ll ride in a carriage with Elline to the Capital for a class on the One Hundred and One Strategies for Becoming a Captivating Rose Who Ensnares the Heartthrobs of High Society. I’ll cover all the necessary expenses for Elline as well. Mother, Father—I do hope you’ll permit it.”
“You’d go regardless of our permission, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would.”
I owed it to Elline, who’d endured Roze’s relentless torment, to provide her with the best circumstances possible.
A few episodes where the heroine embarrasses herself in society for lacking proper etiquette—skipping those quietly wouldn’t hurt the story.
It wasn’t those trivial incidents that drove the narrative.
In a world created solely for Elline’s love to bloom, minor scandals arising in corners where the male lead didn’t exist could hardly matter.
“I’m not so different myself.”
“Pardon?”
“No one cares what I’ll do when I grow up, what I’ll become.”
In a world prepared only for the protagonist, my future was something only I could concern myself with and take responsibility for.
It was still distant, but if the original story held true, the Stein household might collapse before long.
‘Whether I tormented the heroine or not—that doesn’t matter.’
Once the wedding falls through, the royal court, conscious of public opinion, will look to the Crown Prince’s former fiancée’s household for the reason for the dissolution.
‘The male lead, the Crown Prince himself, will want to distance the Stein household as much as possible so that Elline, whom he loves, needn’t be troubled by them….’
Yet I couldn’t prevent the ending for that reason.
After all, I was an important villain helping to forge the love between the heroine and the male lead.
Still, I wanted to prepare a means of livelihood in case the Count Stein household collapsed into poverty later.
Even if Roze, as I now was, carried the sin of coveting a friend’s beloved, her parents at least had done nothing wrong.
I had no wish to see my family suffer, whether in this life or the next.
‘If I end up destitute, I’ll open a Magic Workshop under my own name.’
In my assessment, becoming a Mage was the perfect way to support my family alone.
This was undeniably a world where Mages existed, and there was a saying about following the law when in Rome.
Fortunately, I’d possessed this body six whole years before the original story began. No concrete settings or episodes could have been fixed yet.
So for a while, I could do as I pleased.
Hidden in the blind spots of the original narrative, I received daily special instruction from the heroine, who was preparing to apply as a managing Mage at the Magic Tower.
“Do you prefer water, fire? Or wind? Earth? Let’s start by settling on a goal.”
“Anything. As long as I can earn enough to eat.”
“Roze, that’s not a goal.”
“Then, getting a job at a tea shop? Enough to warm up cold tea water?”
“A dream as weak as your constitution.”
“Understood. Flood-maker, earthquake-maker, drought-maker.”
Learning to manifest Mana in one’s hands as if creating something from nothing; grasping the difficult modes of thought unique to Mages and their singular ways of implementation.
Elline was only a novice Mage who hadn’t yet shown her full potential, but she would one day become the world’s strongest—a Grand Mage of legendary caliber.
“Good. Imagine gathering the energy that touches your skin from the earth to the crown of your head into a single point. Simply put, you’re creating a great catastrophe in your mind.”
“A catastrophe? Any kind?”
“Yes, any kind! Now close your eyes and find the source of the vibration flowing from somewhere within your body, and ask yourself this.”
Who am I?
‘You are―’
“…What?”
It was a moment I would never forget.
At the moment I felt a ringing in my ears as if they might split, six years of effort finally bore fruit.
“…I think I can feel it.”
That day when I turned twenty, my first spring arrived.
I had finally awakened as a Mage.
“Good heavens. Congratulations, Roze….”
A stream of water surged before us. Elline hesitated for a moment, then her smile returned, and she laughed brightly.
“Such a broad spectrum in your water Affinity!”
“Thank you, Elline. I owe it all to you.”
“Then we should apply to the Magic Tower right away! Our security division is actually recruiting water Mages specially at the moment.”
“Hmm?”
And so I found employment quickly, but something felt off.

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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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