On Official Duty with My Tower Master Ex-Boyfriend - Chapter 46

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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 46
The creaking floorboards groaning under someone’s footsteps and the windows rattling in the wind made sleep impossible.
Checking the time, it was well past midnight—who in heaven’s name was wandering about at this hour?
‘Should I call the Innkeeper? What should I do?’
While I was deliberating, something suddenly crashed outside my door with a heavy thud.
“……!”
I jolted upright, clutching the blanket, but an unnatural silence followed.
The wind had stopped, the window frame sat still, and those creaking footsteps had vanished entirely.
‘Surely no one’s collapsed, have they?’
Biting my fingertip in uncertainty, I finally cracked the door open and peered down the corridor.
If the crash had been loud enough to reach the ground floor, the Innkeeper would have come up to investigate. Which meant if someone had fallen, they could lie there untended until morning.
‘Where did they fall? I can barely see anything.’
As I opened the door a fraction wider and leaned out to look—
“Hk—!”
What met my eyes wasn’t someone collapsed on the floor, but a person being stuffed into a sack.
Every hair on my body stood on end as I scrambled to slam the door shut—but someone yanked open the door to my room instead.
“……!”
“Peeking like a little rat, weren’t you?”
A man with bleached hair at the tips flashed gold teeth at me in a leering grin.
My heart lurched; I couldn’t move a single finger, and the man continued with an almost patronizing tone.
“Keep your mouth shut and stay quiet, and nothing bad will happen. You understand?”
“Y-yes. I’ll be quiet…….”
I stammered out my answer in a voice thick with fear, but a woman who’d apparently slipped into my room was already rifling through my bag. She held something up and cut me off.
“Wait. This woman’s a Civil Servant.”
“What? Ah, damn it.”
The man’s expression darkened. He stroked his beard, then seized me by the collar and hauled me to my feet.
“Ugh……!”
“Sneaking into a place like this? How underhanded.”
“N-no, that’s not it. I was going to quit anyway.”
“Take her too. She could be a headache—better to dispose of her.”
The man threw me out into the corridor as though I weighed nothing.
A stout woman waiting outside dragged me toward the sack containing the other person.
I nearly screamed at the horror of it.
“N-no, I won’t tell anyone! I’ll keep my mouth shut and stay quiet……!”
“Civil Servants always report if we let them go. Not out of some cheap sense of justice—they do it for credit. Performance reviews, you know.”
These people had no intention whatsoever of releasing me.
Was this how I was going to die here? What in the world was in that sack?
I was terrified and disoriented, but if this was to be my end, I didn’t want to go begging and whimpering. It felt unfair.
I clawed desperately at the woman’s thick arms and screamed.
“Yes! I will report every last one of you! I don’t need credit! Is Imperial Law a joke? You’ll all face justice for your crimes! Right now, agh—!”
A dull blow struck the back of my head, and my vision went black.
***
I came to at the sound of murmuring voices.
‘My head……’
I tried to reach up and touch the throbbing pain at the back of my skull, but my hands wouldn’t obey.
The pressure I felt around my jaw and wrists brought everything flooding back—the incident at the inn crystallized in my mind, and my eyes snapped open.
My wrists were bound with rope, and a gag had been forced into my mouth.
‘Am I actually kidnapped right now? This can’t be real!’
I looked around in silent horror and found myself in what appeared to be a warehouse with soundproofed walls.
Several other people seemed to have been brought here like me, but they all just rolled their eyes fearfully, not moving.
Rough-looking men stationed against the walls kept watch, their eyes gleaming, making it difficult to spot any avenue of escape.
‘I had a bad feeling the moment I entered that inn. I should’ve just stayed at an expensive place in the city center, even if it cost more……!’
But regret, however belated, changed nothing.
With my mouth gagged, I couldn’t even ask the others what was happening, which made everything worse.
I tried tugging at the rope around my wrists but got nowhere.
‘Where am I? Where were all these people taken from?’
Wherever this was, at least it had to be within Melgote.
I couldn’t leave the city’s bounds on my own, after all.
‘……Right?’
A momentary panic seized me—what if my barrier had somehow failed?—but I reasoned it was unlikely.
Multiple Magical Beasts were confined nearby, their chaotic emotions swirling through the space and making me dizzy.
At least I could still isolate the presence of specific beasts, which was a small mercy.
‘The aura of a Crystal Whale—we must be near the sea. The floor doesn’t sway, so we’re not on a ship. Not at the Dock itself, but close to the water.’
I was barely maintaining composure as I pieced together my surroundings when—
the warehouse door suddenly swung open, and the stout woman appeared. The same woman who’d struck me unconscious at the inn.
“Time’s up. Get them out.”
At her command, the guards lashed our group together—mine and the others’ bound wrists tied to one long rope—and dragged us out of the warehouse.
The people made no resistance, their faces resigned. They seemed to know already what fate awaited them.
At the end of a long corridor, I spotted a wooden door with all its paint peeling away.
Since the corridor and door were singular, it seemed that was where we were headed.
‘I don’t know where they’re taking us, but escape would be easiest while we’re moving.’
I’d been holding a hairpin palmed in my hand the whole time, its sharp end slowly wearing away at the rope.
‘I’ll shred it down to near-snapping, then bolt the moment we pass through that door. If I run toward where the Crystal Whale’s aura is strongest, I’ll find the sea—and the Coast Guard won’t be far after that.’
I rehearsed this rough plan in my mind, my eyes fixed on the slowly opening door.
And as I stepped through it after the others—
“Allow me to present today’s auction items for your preview!”
A man’s voice boomed out as though amplified by an Amplification Scroll, and he gestured dramatically at me and the bound group.
“……!”
I almost dropped the hairpin in shock.
The door I’d passed through hadn’t led outside—it opened onto some kind of stage.
‘Auction items? You’re telling me this is an Auction House?’
The stage was lined with half-hidden paintings and antiques displayed only in silhouette, and beside them, I and the others stood bound in rope.
The audience was packed with unidentifiable figures wearing black robes and white masks.
Trapped within all those unseen gazes, I felt like an insect pinned to glass.
I’d wondered why so many Magical Beasts’ fear saturated the space.
Now it was clear—they too had stood on this stage, subjected to the same stares.
‘A secret auction, with faces hidden? Then this is definitely an illegal operation.’
Even in the Imperial Capital, illegal auctions were a persistent problem for Civil Servants.
No matter how strictly we cracked down, they always seemed to resurface somewhere.
But to put people on such an illegal stage……
A chill ran through my shoulders.
“Today we’re delighted to present Labor Camp workers—high demand from our last offering.”
“……?”
At the Auctioneer’s proud announcement, my frantically working mind ground to a halt.
What had I just heard? Labor Camp workers?
I was doubting my own ears when the Auctioneer drove the point home.
“As you can see, they’re all young and healthy—excellent durability.”
“……Mm! Mmph! Mmpf!”
I was the only one who reacted with audible horror and struggle.
The Auctioneer’s gaze and those of the bidders fixed sharply on me.
The air seemed to freeze. I couldn’t breathe.
When I hesitated, the Auctioneer added with theatrical flair—
“Of course, if a worker is too clever and talks too much, we happily trim their tongue for you as a courtesy.”
“Mm……!”
Unable to protest at such a gruesome comment, I glanced at the others beside me in their bonds.
They all averted their eyes and kept still—clearly they alone had known what this place was from the start.
‘This is insane. They’re all insane.’
Illegal auctions were happening everywhere, but I’d had no idea it had gotten this far.
I knew that near the Dock, smuggling vessels came and went constantly.
Crystal Whale specimens and rare Magical Beasts were regularly smuggled out to other continents aboard those ships.
But in this Empire, Slave Trading was strictly forbidden.
If I was sold here, I’d be loaded onto a smuggling vessel and dragged across the sea to another continent.
‘How far does Melgote extend into the ocean?’
The image of my future—drowning in frigid waters or being murdered for appearing suspicious—played out vividly in my mind.
As the auction began in earnest, I and the others were dragged back inside the stage.
Just before the door closed, the Auctioneer poked his head out and pointed directly at me.
“That one—take her separately and remove her tongue and index finger.”

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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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