My Husband Is Not the Magic Tower Master - 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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Episode 31

“Really, don’t you think you’ve gone too far this time?”
Elline Ross.
A year and six months into her tenure at the Magic Tower.
The earth mage who commanded the largest share of power in the tower had shed her rookie status in a single bound, and now she held something in her grip.
An Employment Success Necklace?
No—the crown prince’s collar.
“Stop tormenting Rosé Stein!”
“Wait, now—”
“How could you be such a coward, cornering the woman you’re about to marry like this?!”
A coward!
Elline shrieked so loudly the words seemed to crack the air.
The crown prince’s private study. The 100th Floor.
Though it had been Lucas who encountered the uninvited guest here, not her.
“Ugh.”
Lucas groaned, unable to recover his composure against Elline’s ear-splitting cry.
“Calm down.”
“You were wrong!”
“Where did all the guards at the door go—”
“I sent them all away! A pitiful spark like that dies with a single whistle!”
“Lin, I’m not feeling well, please—”
And who says his direct guard detail is nothing but a worthless spark anyway.
Lucas found himself utterly baffled as he pressed a pale hand to his mouth.
His guards—every last one of them now sprawled unconscious on the floor—were by no means weak.
Elline was simply several times stronger than they were.
He merely regretted the wasted time of subordinates who should have been working.
“Do you know how much salary I pay for a single valuable person like that—”
“That’s exactly your problem!”
Pat-pat-pat.
“Gah.”
Lucas scrambled onto a chair as Elline shook his collar below her, his face draining to ashen white.
He had wanted the closeness, but not in an atmosphere this hostile.
Elline had changed greatly.
It had begun this year with the root cause of it all—his fiancée entering the Magic Tower.
An eccentric, bungling mage.
House Stein’s blood—eternal adversary to the royal family.
All because of her—Rosé Stein!
“Cough, cough! Time out!”
Seizing the moment when Elline’s swing went wild, he slipped free from her grip and called out desperately.
“I was wrong!”
……
As his urgent cry made her gradually still, Lucas finally wiped the cold sweat from his brow as though he might yet live.
“Phew.”
He had nearly lost not only his heart but his life to the woman he adored!
What a tragically amusing thing that would be.
“Ahem, hmm!”
Lucas deliberately ignored the sharp stare boring into the back of his head and struggled to speak.
“At least, you could give me a chance to explain, couldn’t you?”
“Explain what.”
“Things don’t have to get this heated the moment you walk in… and besides, between us—”
“What’s between us?”
“That is…”
Four o’clock in the afternoon.
An awkward hour—too early for a shared meal, yet too late to nibble on refreshments for the next one.
Lucas glanced at the Pocket Watch carelessly left in one corner of the study, then let his words trail off.
‘…how tiresome.’
It was a kind of jinx.
Late afternoon, a reunion with the lover she’d been missing, the same predictable argument that always ended the same way.
‘Nothing will change today, will it.’
The only difference, small as it was, lay in the absence of her one true friend from the Tower this evening.
Two days ago, Lucas had sent her out on an assignment by his own order.
‘Whether she gets hurt out there, or worse—dies in some accident—he doesn’t care. That’s what he really wants.’
But Elline wished she didn’t know that.
Lucas had chosen not to tell her.
Despite the countless objections raised by the elders, the one who had forced through that order was not Lucas himself, but someone less than a stranger to him—his father.
The King of Delpinia.
“Elline.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“If you keep reacting like this—”
I find myself wondering.
‘Why, exactly, are you so determined to protect House Stein?’
There’s a terribly persistent guardian hovering at that woman’s side.
And she has been for such a very long time….
“Ah.”
Lucas shuddered at the mere thought of it, revolted by his own imagination.
Rosé Stein. A name that held nothing special, nothing remarkable—ordinary and familiar.
Perhaps that was why.
It had been half a year since the engagement was settled between their houses, and Lucas still couldn’t bring himself to pronounce her commonplace name with ease.
‘It must be because of my Master.’
Looking back, the memory remained vivid in his mind.
During a brutal session of magical training, his own insufficient skill had earned him a thorough thrashing from his Master—dust in the wind, beaten down without mercy.
How startled he’d been when that presence scattered without form at the slightest breath, scattering like spray.
Five more years had passed, yet Lucas never ceased to marvel.
Such swift and precise spatial magic was rarely seen in a lifetime.
“Rosé Stein will be safe. Don’t worry.”
“Really now. Who calls their future wife by name like that?”
“What can I say? My heart still belongs to you, doesn’t it?”
Lucas pulled Elline toward him as she perched on the chair, his grin carefree and easy.
She tried to slip free in a moment of hesitation, but she was a heartbeat too slow.
Getting up had been effortless enough; getting down was another matter entirely.
Since Lucas always played these games with her so lightly, she had grown careless—unaware of one simple fact.
The true strength in an adult man’s grip.
“Mmph—don’t hold me like that!”
“It’s nearly the end of the shift anyway. No one will come.”
This was the 100th Floor—the Crown Prince’s private quarters.
The guard detail would be pinned to the lower levels for at least another hour.
When she thought about it, those moments alone together didn’t feel like a waste at all.
“…this isn’t so bad, is it.”
Lucas closed his eyes slowly, unbothered as Elline struggled and pushed against him from within his embrace.
“I can’t breathe!”
“Then break free.”
If she truly meant it, she could have shoved him away with force.
But they both knew the truth.
No matter how much anger might flare between them, how much they might rage—they would never truly hurt each other.
The warmth where their bodies overlapped on the single chair grew strange, almost unbearably hot.
Elline’s voice trembled as her robe fluttered around her.
“…let me go.”
“….”
“…let me go, Lucas.”
“Elline.”
“If you don’t listen—”
“Should we call off the wedding?”
“…what?”
In that instant, Elline pushed him away with all her strength.
Without magic, with pure, honest, desperate force.
“Are you serious?!”
“Hm?”
Elline released him on instinct, and as Lucas flailed his arms in confusion, she cried out again.
“Instead of spouting such nonsense now, you should say something that actually makes sense!”
“Like what?”
“Give me a break—even half a day will do! Or else lift that ten-day confinement order you imposed on me at the Stein Residence!”
Bang!
Elline brought both palms down hard on the desk.
She seemed more ill-tempered lately, Lucas thought as he found himself trapped between her arms, muttering under his breath.
“This is rather troublesome.”
Besides, he hadn’t been the one to issue the confinement order in the first place.
Yet unlike her usual habit of bursting into tears, this time she held them back, her lips pressed into a firm line.
Lucas smiled softly, wiping the corner of her eyes with the back of his hand.
“Confinement lifted. Will that do?”
“And a break too. Even three hours—no, half a day would be enough.”
“Two days.”
“…!”
He tucked a strand of her disheveled hair behind her ear as he spoke.
“Because you’re beautiful, I thought I’d be generous.”
“I’ve disliked that about you since we first met.”
“Don’t you know—fondness born of irritation is still fondness?”

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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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