My Husband Is Not the Magic Tower Master - Chapter 98

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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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Chapter 98

The successful pact with the Demon God was certainly good news.
But I hadn’t come here expecting a reward in return.
If I’d done this work with compensation in mind, I’d have asked him to fill this place with demon beast amusement parks and apartment complexes.
‘Then maybe I really would’ve struck it rich and turned my life around.’
But I wasn’t that calculating.
I was just an ordinary person who wanted to live comfortably, playing the part of a materialist all this time.
‘My life’s been spiraling downward anyway.’
I just wanted to stop suffering and live normally like everyone else.
“…I don’t need any of it.”
If I could just escape this place—the very sight of it made me sick.
I didn’t need to be the world’s strongest, or any of that nonsense. I didn’t need a wish.
“Just let me leave. At this rate, you’ll end up filming a nature documentary with me….”
The Demon God answered immediately at my half-hearted plea.
“Is that so?”
“Yes….”
I simply nodded to the Demon God and blinked my eyes for a moment.
And yet.
“Huh?”
A completely different landscape spread before my eyes.
Cool, shimmering, brilliant water rippled and rose swiftly up to my chin.
“Blub-blub-blub, curse it!”
Why was he throwing me into the water?!
“Gasp, gasp!”
Before I could think, I flailed about with sodden limbs, my center of balance lost in the water.
I’d asked to return to the Human World, not to be drowned.
Splash, splash!
“Gasp!”
The water was too deep to cast magic—my hands and feet kept slipping.
The more I thrashed and struggled, the more strength drained from my body. Just as I thought I was sinking under, gurgling down—
Plunge!
I felt someone dive into the water and pull my sinking arm upward.
‘Save me!’
Driven by survival instinct, I clung desperately to the arm that held me, wrapping myself around the person’s chest.
As I gasped for breath in their embrace, a familiar scent drifted to me.
And a voice I’d longed to hear.
“…You come back and show me you’ve missed me like this?”
“Wh—yes?”
Without thinking, I stiffened and looked up.
And there, before my eyes, was the face I’d been aching to see.
“Carlo?”
Oh.
As I stumbled in surprise, he steadied my waist with practiced ease and pulled me even closer to himself.
With our eyes meeting again in his embrace, I babbled in confusion.
“I—I mean, it’s firm and nice, and it reminded me of someone, but….”
No, wait—that’s not it.
“Hold on—”
The initial disorientation of reuniting with Carlo faded quickly, and I hastily pulled away, glancing about in alarm.
A dense forest, and within it, a large pond.
The grass was the same verdant green and the water was clean, but unlike the restored Demon Realm, the air here felt oddly serene.
And this place….
“I feel like I’ve been here before….”
The deepest part of the water reached to my chin, while the shallows barely came to my knees.
As I stood gazing down blankly into the water, Carlo draped his outer coat over me and spoke.
“This was the place where the boundary between the Demon Realm and the Human World once lay.”
“….”
“But it’s gone now.”
Only then did the truth settle in.
So this place is….
“The Human World?”
I’d finally come home.
* * *
While Rose had been trapped in the Demon Realm for a fortnight, much had transpired in Delpinia.
One hour in the Demon Realm equaled roughly three days in the Human World.
Three years had slipped past.
Three years since Rose Stein vanished, since those left behind waited for her with aching hearts.
Lucas had formally ascended to the throne, and the moment Elline’s magical condition stabilized, they celebrated a grand royal wedding.
Elline had become the queen of Delpinia in her own right, and had borne a precious prince who carried the features of them both.
By the time the child had seen the world for nearly a year, Carlo made a rare visit to the royal palace.
In greeting him, Lucas and Elline held a modest tea time together.
“What was the child’s name again?”
“Ruelika, sir. Honestly, I must have told you more than twenty times before she was even born.”
“I keep forgetting. Just call her Lika.”
“You’ve said that at least ten times yourself.”
Insisting his words were wasted breath, Lucas merely exhaled a long sigh with a resigned expression.
“Your memory does seem to be worsening by the day, sir.”
“You’ve developed wrinkles. Especially around your eyes.”
Time yields to no one.
As Carlo clicked his tongue and muttered, Lucas bit his lip with a fresh smile.
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“The moment I see you, Master, I find myself frowning.”
Do you know that? Your character has written so many wrinkles on your face.
Is this some sort of fit of bachelor’s hysteria?
He didn’t dare speak the rest aloud, fearing Carlo might take offense, and Lucas merely smiled serenely.
“…Why are you smiling suddenly? At thin air?”
“I suppose… seeing you makes me happy, Master.”
“Nonsense. Must be the child.”
Carlo murmured the words as if to himself, then slowly turned his gaze toward the garden path.
There, Ruelika, just beginning to take her first steps, toddled along holding Elline’s hand.
“….”
Hair the color of pink, inherited from her mother, and blue eyes that were the mirror image of his own student.
Watching that small creature, hardly a fistful in size, something would sometimes ache quietly in the corner of his heart.
“…If one has a child…”
“….”
“Will I too, someday, become someone different?”
Not yet having found the precise words to define what emotion this was, he left the question hanging.
“…You will surely become a different person, Master.”
Though the murmur seemed to dissolve into the empty air, Lucas answered with perfect clarity.
It would happen without fail.
For three years, he’d remained cloistered within the Mansion, never venturing out, and the only people Carlo visited were Lucas and Elline—once every six months at most.
Without showing it outwardly, Lucas understood that Carlo was lonely.
Watching Carlo’s wordless bitterness, Lucas resolved once again to offer him genuine solace.
He emptied the cooling tea from Carlo’s cup and poured fresh hot water in.
“Don’t worry, Master.”
“….”
“Rose will return soon….”
Splash.
Perhaps because he’d been concentrating too intently on filling the cup.
“Huh? Where did he go?”
Carlo had suddenly vanished.
Like a man who’d remembered something lost and rushed off to find it.
* * *
Meanwhile, I had just emerged from the water and was using Magic to dry my soaked clothes when shock struck me.
“Three years? Three yeeeeears?”
Oh heavens. I’d forgotten that time flowed so differently between the Demon Realm and the Human World.
I was so desperate to find a way to escape the Demon Realm that I forgot Carlo was growing old waiting for me, day after day.
‘Though thanks to my Immortality, I haven’t aged—just withered away to nothing.’
Still, who will compensate me for the time I’ve lost? For the years we’ve lost together?
Three years without seeing my family, and so much must have happened around them.
‘Elline must have missed me terribly.’
I had no way of knowing if they were all doing well.
We finally made it safely back to the Human World.
But now that we were here, I felt lost—uncertain where to even begin putting things right.
‘God, this is maddening.’
Part of me wanted to cry my eyes out, but I couldn’t bear to do it in front of Carlo.
“You must be cold. You’ll catch a chill standing out here like this.”
“No, really. I’m fine.”
Because ever since our reunion, his eyes had been dripping with honey.
“To find you, I traced every current of Mana flowing across the continent.”
“…What?”
“Every day for three years. Not once did I stop.”
The honey had stopped dripping. Now his eyes burned with the intensity of someone about to do something reckless.
‘Hmm.’
I wondered if I should beg his forgiveness sincerely, right now.
I had made him wait a long time, that much was true. I felt a flicker of fear and blinked quietly.
The moment I looked away, a warm, large hand gently interlaced with mine.
“After three years, we meet again like this, my love.”
“…”
The moment our eyes met, I felt it—that subtle, devoted tenderness in his gaze.
It was dangerous. Very dangerous.

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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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