On Official Duty with My Tower Master Ex-Boyfriend - Chapter 12

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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 12
When I asked casually, as if unbothered, Cade emerged from the backlighting with a dissatisfied expression.
“Running away? The thing is, she’s hard to kill outright, so it’s better not to cross paths with her.”
“She? Are you saying that *was* a person?”
The being that made the magical beasts flee so wildly they nearly ran beneath the carriage wheels—?
“If the Tower Master can’t do anything about her, isn’t that dangerous? We should alert the Guard Corps and the Imperial Capital, and yes, we should inform the Grand Duke of Melgote as well.”
Perhaps his pride had been struck. Cade looked down at me steadily and spoke.
“It’s not that she’s stronger and I can’t kill her outright. I’m not helpless because my power falls short.”
“Then why…?”
“Alerting the Imperial Capital or the Grand Duke would be useless. The figure on the water surface is the Grand Duke of Melgote.”
The Grand Duke of Melgote—that referred to the 2nd Princess.
Had he really just used the phrase “hard to kill outright” to describe a member of the Imperial Family?
No matter how bad relations between the Magic Tower and the Imperial Palace were, would he speak so freely about such a thing in front of a civil servant?
I turned over Cade’s words in my mind.
‘So he hates her so much he’d like to kill her immediately, but since she’s Imperial Family he can’t actually do it, so he avoids meeting her entirely?’
It was a truly astonishing way of thinking.
“Cade. Don’t you know what lese-majesty is?”
“Did it sound like I don’t?”
Cade pulled out a blood-stained invitation from his pocket and waved it.
…….
I vividly recalled what he had done to the 3rd Princess at the banquet hall today.
Looking at that, he clearly understood what lese-majesty meant better than anyone—and he was even capable of putting it into practice.
He was a reckless scoundrel.
Cade let out a low chuckle, as if my thoughts had written themselves across my face.
“Didn’t you see the magical beasts fleeing? She’s more unpleasant than a monster beast.”
“The Grand Duke went out to sea with the Monster Subjugation Squad, didn’t she? Magical beasts fear the scent of a monster beast’s blood.”
“Right. That might be why.”
As Cade answered, his eyes gleamed with an unsettling light—similar to when he had burned the bat-like magical beasts that swarmed the Tower Master’s office.
He didn’t seem to bother hiding his hostility toward the Grand Duke of Melgote.
It was a different look than the one in his eyes when he stood before the 3rd Princess.
Could it be that the reason he had rejected the official documents wasn’t simply because I’d brought them, but because they were related to the Grand Duke of Melgote?
‘Separate from the poor relations between the Magic Tower and the Imperial Palace, what could have happened between him and the Grand Duke?’
Asking about personal matters bothered me, since he and I weren’t anything more than acquaintances at this point.
The fact that Cade and I were together in this inn room was strange in itself.
“What was the real reason you put me in that carriage? I still don’t think I’ve heard a proper answer.”
Cade raised one eyebrow as if questioning why I’d ask such a thing.
“You said you’d wait.”
……?
“That’s enough. It’s late—get some rest.”
He wore a slightly deflated expression before vanishing in a swirl.
‘……What was that supposed to mean?’
Standing there bewildered, I suddenly felt heat rise to my face and yanked open the window.
‘W-what is he talking about? If someone overheard that, they’d think I’ve been desperately waiting for him. Unbelievable.’
I had said I would wait, of course. But that was purely a matter of business, wasn’t it?
That didn’t mean I wanted to sit down face-to-face with him and spend time chatting away together!
‘Did it come across the wrong way? I thought I sounded calm about it? Or did I?’
Even breathing in the cold night air, the heat refused to leave my face.
‘What if it looked like I had lingering feelings?’
It would have been absurd to make excuses about it not being that way. That might have made it look even more like I had lingering feelings.
Suddenly I was even more reluctant to return to the Magic Tower. If I could avoid it, I would have gladly worked overtime instead.
***
The next evening, in the Magic Tower’s office.
Cade sat on the edge of his desk as he listened to Ben’s report.
“The subjugation squad?”
“They still need more recovery time. It was an unprecedented forced march, so……”
Ben trailed off, glancing nervously at Cade.
Simply shortening the intervals between monster subjugation expeditions was exhausting for wizards.
It would have been better if they could have handled things on land, but unfortunately, the monsters only appear at sea.
Maintaining a spell to levitate their bodies on the water’s surface while casting combat magic consumed not only mana but also an enormous amount of focus and mental fortitude.
Even during breaks, if they didn’t encounter a small island or vessel, they had to rest while suspended in the air, making it impossible to even close their eyes briefly.
They had to face the monsters without proper rest until the subjugation was complete.
‘Normally it takes four or five days, but this time he finished it in three.’
It was a record-breaking acceleration.
The wizards, pleased that they could return to the Magic Tower earlier, found themselves at the end of the subjugation wishing they could faint instead.
They all collapsed the moment they arrived at the tower. Several wizards were still sleeping soundly in the dormitories.
Ben himself had only recently awakened and wasn’t fully alert.
It seemed almost incomprehensible that Cade had attended the 3rd Princess’s banquet right after returning from the subjugation, and then was already handling Magic Tower business the very next day—today.
‘It was an unavoidable schedule to attend the 3rd Princess’s birthday banquet, but… it was a forced march I never want to experience again.’
As Ben mulled over the grueling schedule that still made him nauseated, he suddenly noticed something odd.
‘Wait. Wasn’t the subjugation pace faster than usual even before Rana brought the invitation?’
He could vividly remember the Tower Master’s figure forging ahead so rapidly that the rear guard had trouble keeping up.
Of course, he had no intention of asking about that.
‘Since he seems to have gotten tired of intimidating civil servants, he probably needed a new outlet for his frustrations.’
While words could work now, before leaving the tower, he had been a type difficult to associate with.
Ben thought that merciless and sharp temperament couldn’t possibly have disappeared.
“How much leave can we give the subjugation squad?”
“If we want to give them an extended vacation, it would be difficult to let them all rest at once, but we could rotate them in three teams so they rest in shifts.”
“They won’t have to go out to sea for the next month.”
“That’s true, but the barrier still……”
Ben glanced at Cade even more nervously than before.
Cade furrowed his brow and smiled bitterly.
He gazed at the barrier spread out beyond the window and infused it with magical power.
Shiiing—
With a sharp sound, mana seeped into the barrier.
Just as it seemed the barrier was being reinforced, some of Cade’s mana bounced back from the barrier.
As if he had anticipated this, Cade showed no surprise. Only Ben nervously watched his mood.
The barrier had been cracked since the death of the former Tower Master and remained unrepaired.
Personnel were needed to guard the barrier stones to prevent the Magic Tower’s barrier from collapsing.
There was a sense of how it had come to this.
“What about what I asked you to look into?”
“There’s still no definite progress, but we found more witnesses who saw a carriage bearing the Imperial Family’s crest on the day the wizards died.”
The problem was the lack of concrete evidence.
Only the death of the former Tower Master was widely known in the empire, but several wizards had died around the same time.
And each of those deaths had something questionable about it.
‘The Imperial Family is clearly involved, but all we have is suspicion.’
It was said that the Imperial Palace had tried to make the 2nd Princess—the Grand Duke of Melgote—the new Tower Master.
If the former Tower Master’s will hadn’t been discovered belatedly, it certainly would have happened that way.
As Cade furrowed his brow and concentrated, Ben, who had been hesitating, spoke with sudden resolve.
“The barrier won’t collapse anytime soon.”
…….
As an unexpected look came back at him, Ben flustered and pointed to the window.
“Oh, you’ve been looking out the window this whole time, so I thought……”
“Have I?”
Cade straightened his clothes and instructed Ben to leave.
Even after being left alone, Cade’s gaze remained fixed on the window.
‘Is she not coming today? She said she’d wait.’
He checked the time and clicked his tongue.
Cade continued looking out the window for some time, but Vivian never appeared.
She didn’t come the next day, or the day after that either.
‘Is she not working? When she was making a fuss about stamping seals, where did that go? Has she already given up?’
The wizards endured days of holding their breath, bewildered by their suddenly irritable Tower Master.
Until Vivian, haggard from successive nights of overtime work, stepped into the Magic Tower.

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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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