The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master - 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
The seeds of doubt were quick to die.
Since she hadn’t seen the interior of the Prayer Chamber, there might have been even more debris scattered inside than out.
Or perhaps there had been another shock within those walls.
‘Since Nox said he’d understand the situation, I can ask him then.’
By the time she’d shaken off the lingering unease, they had reached the main gate. Cecilia spotted the knights and carriage attendants of House Weberdine waiting before the Temple entrance.
It was a chance to end this awkward escort.
She turned quickly to address the Holy Knight.
“There’s no need to accompany me further.”
“I should see you depart safely.”
“House Weberdine has sent quite a number of knights, hasn’t it? Thank you for escorting me today.”
At her polite refusal, Miguel reluctantly nodded his assent.
“Then I shall await the day we meet again, Lady.”
Rather than kiss the lady’s hand as the other knights would have, Miguel placed his hand over his heart and bowed—the salute of a Holy Knight.
As the man finished his dignified farewell and turned to leave, Cecilia pivoted toward the waiting knights as though she’d been expecting exactly this moment.
“Did you find him?”
“We did.”
Between the broad-shouldered knights, a man shuffled forward, visibly shrunken into himself.
Though his build matched theirs, his hunched posture and that familiar dark Robe betrayed him at once.
“Lien.”
At her call, the robed man flinched and looked up. A face lovely enough never to tire of appeared softly before her.
[Find the robed man among the departing Believers and bring him to me.]
That was the quiet order she’d given the house knights when they arrived late with news of the incident.
‘Given Lien’s nature, he wouldn’t have left early out of concern for my condition. In a sacred Temple, the only man dressed in that dark Robe would be Lien.’
To judge by his capture, her prediction had proved rather accurate.
“Cecilia.”
Like a child caught in a misdeed, he clutched at the hem of his Robe, uncertain.
When she’d finally found him, she’d wanted to ask why he was at the Temple, why he’d been there.
But his words came faster than her questions.
“Are—are you hurt anywhere—!”
“As you can see, I’m fine.”
She tossed back the line as if she’d said it a hundred times before.
Even after hearing her answer, he couldn’t shake his anxiety. His gaze traced a path from her hair to her face, shoulders, waist and hands, legs, and finally her feet, only then did his shoulders sag slightly.
How fortunate. She pretended not to hear his last murmured word and opened her mouth.
“But what are you doing here, Lien?”
“That is……”
She’d asked out of pure curiosity, with no hint of anger in her tone. Yet his gaze began to drift slowly downward.
“Lien?”
……
Cecilia waited for his answer with patience, then exhaled softly. She’d long since run out of strength to keep standing on the street like this.
Cecilia moved past him and climbed into the carriage. Then she looked back at him, standing motionless outside.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Fortunately, the invitation seemed to present no difficulty, for Lien scrambled hastily into the carriage after her.
The moment he settled into the opposite seat, the carriage lurched forward into motion.
“Lien.”
His shoulders remained rigidly tense. Behind her silver-rimmed glasses, Cecilia watched his violet eyes trembling like a small boat before a storm.
‘From his manner, it doesn’t seem he just happened to be sightseeing and ran into me by chance.’
“I didn’t expect to meet you at the Temple, but I have to ask—you didn’t follow me here, did you?”
It was half-joking as a question.
The ashen-faced man furrowed his brow, bit at his lower lip, and clenched his trembling hands into tight fists.
“N-no, that’s not it at all. I would never follow you or think to upset you! I simply heard the Grand Temple was nearby, and I thought it would be nice to look around. I wasn’t unaware that you were visiting, but what I mean is……”
At his unexpectedly vehement response, Cecilia gently wrapped her hand around his.
“I’m not reproaching you.”
“Then—I haven’t offended you with my terrible behavior?”
His long eyelashes fluttered with a helpless flutter.
Had some former lover or first love once subjected him to harsh words? She’d suspected he was someone with low self-esteem, but this degree of it was severe.
Cecilia rubbed her forehead roughly with the back of her hand. After turning over several words in her mind, she finally let slip one simple, unadorned phrase.
“No. What I meant to say was that I would have preferred if you’d simply asked to come along.”
“……Would it truly be all right for me to travel with you?”
Lien asked with the desperate longing of an abandoned puppy.
‘It’s severe, all right.’
His low self-esteem was troubling enough, but the way her own composure crumbled in response wasn’t entirely normal either.
‘Better than being an arrogant, insufferable type, I suppose.’
She’d always had a weakness for anything fragile and endearing.
Casting aside even a hint of reluctance, Cecilia readily agreed for the sake of a man who seemed desperately in need of reassurance and praise.
“Of course.”
She even offered a deliberate smile. At that, he gasped softly, his cheeks flushing crimson.
“Really?”
He murmured the word, then turned his hand beneath hers and gently squeezed it in return. His eyes crinkled with the satisfied contentment of a well-fed puppy.
That smile was dangerously potent.
‘Nearly blinded myself again.’
The visual assault was particularly overwhelming today. She made a mental note to ask Melanie for an eye compress once she was home, then pressed on with her question.
“You seemed to be coming out of the Prayer Chamber—were you offering prayers?”
“Ah, ……yes.”
“You said you came from the capital. You believe in God?”
It was unexpected.
In this country, believing in God meant serving a deity other than the Emperor—which was to say, opposing the Emperor’s faction.
The palm, warmed to a matching temperature, suddenly pulled away. Lien’s gaze fell to the floor in equal measure, and he nodded silently.
“Hmm, is that so? Then the next time you have reason to visit the Temple, we can go together.”
“Yes, yes!”
His voice rang with unmistakable excitement.
Cecilia let out a soft laugh and turned her gaze toward the window.
She watched the man’s dimly reflected figure in the glass as the scenery slipped past.
His lips curved upward gently, so pleased was he by her proposal. Cecilia’s own mouth, by contrast, had already returned to its proper place.
‘Believes in God, he says.’
A lie.
It had to be.
Because Lien was a Mage.
* * *
There was a time when she’d recommended serotonin supplements to a colleague driven to madness by endless repetitive experiments, spouting some theory about how all psychological stress stemmed from hormones and neurotransmitters.
[If only T would just disappear.]
Her colleague had immediately torn into her for it.
If only she’d known then that a cheaper, far more effective cure existed.
Then her colleague wouldn’t have bankrupted himself seeking a psychiatric hospital, and she wouldn’t have caught blame for the fact that even medication wasn’t working.
In the Marquis’s Study, where all of Weberdine’s people had assembled,
Cecilia, with Charles padding along behind her faithfully, was truly experiencing the profound efficacy of Animal Therapy.
The warm body temperature, the rough tongue licking her fingertips, the soft fur—
“This is outrageous!”
Even as the Marquis’s face flushed red with indignation before her eyes, she remained serene.
“An accident in the Temple itself, and of all people it happens to Cecilia! It’s clearly some scheme cooked up by those Dilanshae dogs!”
The Marquis hurled the newspaper he’d been holding roughly onto the table.
There were moments when the Marquis, usually so composed, had a notably low boiling point—precisely when the Imperial Court and its lackeys came up in conversation.
‘Dilanshae.’
Cecilia turned the familiar name over in her mind at leisure.
She recalled without difficulty a lesson from Lien.
[There are currently two influential Magic families in the Empire.]
[Magic families?]
[Yes. If the Holy family of Weberdine serves as the Temple’s steadfast backer, then the Magic family, the Dilanshae Dukedom, might be called the right arm of the Imperial Court.]
Cecilia remembered something the Marquis had said at a luncheon sometime ago.
[Just thinking of what those Dilanshae bastards will try to scheme gives me a headache.]
At the time, the Marquis had made no effort to conceal his hostility toward Dilanshae.
The information painted a single picture: Dilanshae was Weberdine’s principal rival.
That was likely the foundation of the Marquis’s suspicion that Dilanshae was behind the accident.
When the Marquis had returned to his estate after wrapping up an urgent matter and learned of his daughter’s accident, he’d already seemed certain.
This wasn’t a mere accident. It had to be some scheming by Dilanshae.
Whether his faith in the Temple ran too deep or his animosity toward Dilanshae was too great, she couldn’t say.
But either way, the answer was already clear.
Nox, who watched his father’s fury with unflappable composure even without Charles’s support, countered the Marquis’s assertion.

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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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