My Husband Is Not the Magic Tower Master - Chapter 76

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

76

The moment I left the mansion after dealing with Shuella, I headed straight for the Royal Palace.
I needed to see the King.
I had to ask him why he’d orchestrated this miserable scheme.
“Step aside.”
“Everything beyond this point is the Private Palace, where only His Majesty is permitted to enter. Do you have official business scheduled with him?”
“I don’t have an appointment, but I need to see him right now. If you tell him I have something to discuss regarding the Stein Family Heirloom, he’ll understand well enough.”
“Without prior arrangement, entry is forbidden.”
It was the King’s order. No one except himself was ever to be admitted to the Private Palace where he rested.
It was also the source of rumors that had circulated uneasily for decades.
Given how few people passed through the palace, the fact that he’d sealed off a section of the grand Central Main Palace and kept it for his exclusive use like a personal hideout was hardly inconspicuous.
“Outsiders are not permitted entry.”
“…Outsider?”
Who treats someone as an outsider while gifting them a Crown embedded with peculiar magic?
‘This is absurd.’
I studied the two guards blocking my path with a calm gaze.
They were using large tridents—magical tools imbued with Defensive Magic—to protect the Private Palace.
The incantation woven into the magical tool contained the same bizarre and ominous magic as before.
It wasn’t the rippling waves of flowing water, nor the wavering shimmer of heat haze—instead, it writhed sluggishly like a worm, a type of magic I’d never encountered before.
‘How in the world do they intend to construct a protective spell with something like that?’
I frowned openly.
I’d endured every threat imaginable, yet here I stood, turned away at the gate without even reaching the architect of this whole mess. It was infuriating.
“Then, since I wish to meet with him, could you at least let me inside to request an audience?”
“I’m afraid that is not possible.”
“And what’s your reason this time—”
“You are, after all, an outsider, are you not?”
“How convenient. When His Majesty wanted to give a precious family treasure to some lowly outsider, his hands moved quick enough. Now he pretends not to know me. I’m truly disappointed.”
I raised my head, my eyes cold.
Disappointed—that was putting it mildly.
I was furious enough that I might just break down this door and walk through.
I stepped back from them slowly and raised my hands, using Water Magic to gently suppress the surrounding Mana.
“That magical tool will lose its effect in thirty seconds.”
Unless the incantation was exceptionally sophisticated, any halfway-decent wind-attribute magic would crumble the moment even a single drop of my water touched it.
I could see it now—the magic was gradually disintegrating, clinging awkwardly to the water but slowly breaking apart.
It wasn’t much of a spell after all.
‘I thought it might be Dark Magic, the way it moved so unnaturally.’
The sluggish movements I’d only read about in books, paired with that dark crimson aura—independent of attribute—thudding like a heartbeat, in a steady rhythm. I’d nearly misunderstood.
I’d wondered if this was the Dark Magic I’d only heard rumors of.
But that couldn’t be.
Dark Magic meant the mage’s corruption and ruin.
“I’ll give you ten seconds. Move.”
“It is forbidden. Should you advance any further, the Stein Family will be deemed a treason suspect and subject to immediate execution.”
“Threats? How clichéd. I’ve seen that ending before in this story.”
Why would you try to ruin the author’s neatly closed happy ending?
The word “treason” held no terror for me.
Since his coronation, the King of Delpinia had never properly revealed himself to anyone, and his aptitude for magic was woefully inadequate.
‘That pitch-black robe standing across the room at the wedding ceremony.’
I found myself wondering if that person might actually be the King.
If so, then surely you would know about the power I’ve been hiding.
Without hesitation, I gathered enormous, formidable Mana in both hands—enough to unleash a massive waterfall.
In that instant, a cold pressure swept through the air, and a heavy sensation crushed down upon my body.
If I took even a single step forward from here, this place could become an ocean.
“Ugh…!”
“S-Stop, please!”
The guards, belatedly sensing that chilling presence, cried out in alarm, their voices trembling.
But with a massive wave rising up behind me, my vision gradually blurred and my head turned cold.
At first, I’d only meant to frighten them and be done with it.
Yet now, lost in something like a trance, I found myself thinking it wouldn’t matter if I swept this place clean away with a single gesture.
‘Why is that?’
…It would be exhilarating.
That was the moment it happened.
“You can’t.”
Crack!
Someone seized my arm and in an instant suppressed the water that had been about to engulf the palace, swallowing it into the void.
As water and fire met, something within me felt extinguished in a rush.
It was only then, as my hazy mind cleared and I lifted my head, that I saw who it was.
“…Carlo?”
Standing before me was someone I hadn’t expected.
I murmured his name in a daze, and he lowered his hand from my arm, releasing a weary sigh.
“A laughably counterfeit Family Heirloom, inadequate Shackle Magic, and sudden refusal of entry—didn’t it occur to you that this might be a trap?”
Carlo was raising his voice to me for the first time.
“If you push your power any further, you’ll be caught up in something that can never be undone.”
“….”
“That’s exactly what the King wants.”
* * *
It would have been better if Carlo had explained the King’s intentions to me from the start.
How far did we walk, over and over?
I could only feel a sense of injustice as I was drawn along by his hand, growing ever farther from the Private Palace where the King was staying.
It felt as though I’d been deceived by him all this time.
“So you knew? You were just pretending not to know all along?”
Yet I couldn’t understand why Carlo had acted that way.
He’d had countless chances to give me some hint or clue.
‘The night I arrived two days before the wedding, or the day before, or at the very latest on the wedding day itself….’
Even in that moment when my breath came ragged and I lost my footing, clutching my chest in agony—
When the Magic Tower sounded its alarm and the world was threatened by a massive Demon Outbreak—
You knew the reason all along, yet you concealed it to the very end.
Hadn’t you silently condoned this problem for over two weeks, standing by and doing nothing?
I found it difficult to accept that fact, and could only blink slowly.
It wasn’t until I came to a halt, my strength ebbing away as I held his hand during our hurried pace, that something shifted.
Then, in a way unlike myself, emotions accumulated to an unusual depth came surging up.
“…If I’d known it would come to this, I should have just gone and asked the Crown Prince directly.”
“…Rose.”
“Honestly, I’m more disappointed in you. Far more than I expected.”
It wasn’t as if I’d placed great hopes in him.
Yet neither had I expected nothing at all.
It was complicated to put into words.
At least, I thought that as much as you’d expressed caring for me, you would show me genuine feeling and make an effort through your actions too.
But it seems there are secrets in this world that can remain hidden forever, so long as they never come to light.

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