Chapter 12

When I deliberately asked as if it were no big deal, Kade stepped out of the shadows cast by the backlight, looking displeased.

“Who said I ran away? It’s just that he’s not someone I can easily kill on the spot, so it’s better not to run into him.”

“A person? That was a person?”

The thing that had frightened magical beasts badly enough that they nearly threw themselves under a carriage…?

“If even the Magic Tower Lord can’t do anything about him, isn’t that dangerous? We should notify the guards and the Imperial Palace. Right—the Grand Duke of Melgot should be informed too.”

Perhaps the remark had struck his pride. Kade looked down at me and said,

“It’s not that he’s stronger than me and I can’t kill him. It’s not because I’m outmatched.”

“Then why…?”

“Telling the Imperial Palace or the Grand Duke of Melgot would be pointless. The one on the water was the Grand Duke of Melgot.”

The Grand Duke of Melgot.

In other words, he meant Her Highness the Second Princess.

He had just used the phrase ‘someone I can’t immediately kill’ about a member of the imperial family?

No matter how poor relations between the Magic Tower and the Imperial Palace were, was he really saying things like that in front of a government official?

I mulled over Kade’s words.

Does he hate her enough to want her dead, but since she’s royalty he can’t actually kill her, so he’d rather avoid her entirely?

It was a truly astonishing way of thinking.

“Kade. Do you know what insulting the imperial family is?”

“Did it look like I didn’t?”

Kade pulled a bloodstained invitation from inside his coat and waved it.

“…”

A vivid image flashed through my mind of what he had done to the Third Princess at the banquet.

Judging by that, he knew perfectly well what insulting royalty meant.

He was even willing to put it into practice.

In other words, he was a complete menace.

Perhaps my thoughts showed on my face, because Kade let out a short laugh.

“Didn’t you see the magical beasts running away? He’s more unpleasant than a monster.”

“Didn’t the Grand Duke personally lead a monster-subjugation force out to sea? They say magical beasts are afraid of the scent of monster blood.”

“Right. Maybe that’s why.”

As he answered, a chilling light flashed in Kade’s eyes.

It was similar to the look he’d worn when he’d been ready to burn alive the bat-like magical beasts that had swarmed the Magic Tower office.

He didn’t seem to have any intention of hiding his hostility toward the Grand Duke of Melgot.

Even though both were royals, it was a completely different look from the one he’d worn in front of the Third Princess.

Maybe he didn’t reject those perfectly reasonable official documents because I delivered them.

Maybe it was because they were related to the Grand Duke of Melgot.

Regardless of the bad blood between the Magic Tower and the Imperial Palace, what happened between him and the Grand Duke?

But asking about personal matters felt wrong.

Kade and I weren’t anything to each other anymore.

Honestly, it was strange enough that the two of us were alone together in this inn room.

“What was the real reason you brought me into that carriage? I still don’t think you’ve answered that.”

Kade raised one eyebrow as if asking why I would even ask that.

“You said you’d wait.”

“…?”

“Forget it. It’s late. Get some rest.”

He wore a faintly deflated expression before abruptly disappearing.

“…What is he even talking about?”

I stood there blankly for a moment.

Then, all at once, heat rushed to my face.

I threw open the window.

W-What is that supposed to mean? Anyone hearing that would think I’d been desperately waiting for him. Seriously.

It was true that I’d said I would wait.

But that had been strictly for work-related reasons, hadn’t it?

It definitely hadn’t meant that I wanted to sit down with him and spend time together.

Did I phrase it in a way that could be misunderstood? I thought I’d been perfectly straightforward. Didn’t I?

Even the cold night wind couldn’t cool my face.

What if he thinks I still have feelings for him?

Trying to explain that I didn’t would only be awkward.

In fact, that might make it look even more like I hadn’t moved on.

Suddenly, I wanted to go to the Magic Tower even less.

If there were any way to avoid it, I’d rather stay late at work.

***

The following evening, in the Magic Tower office.

After listening to Ben’s report, Kade leaned against his desk and asked,

“What about the subjugation force?”

“They still need more time to recover. It was a harsher campaign than usual…”

Ben cautiously trailed off while watching Kade’s expression.

Even shortening the intervals between monster-subjugation missions was exhausting for the mages.

If they could fight while standing on solid ground, it would have been easier.

Unfortunately, the monsters appeared at sea.

They had to maintain floating magic to stay above the water while simultaneously casting combat spells.

The drain wasn’t just on their mana but also on their concentration and mental endurance.

Even during breaks, unless they happened upon a small island or a ship, they had to rest while suspended in the air.

That meant they couldn’t even properly sleep.

Until the operation ended, they had no choice but to keep fighting without adequate rest.

Normally it takes four or five days. This time we finished in three.

It was a record-breaking reduction.

Even the mages who had initially been happy to return to the Magic Tower sooner had reached the point where they would have welcomed unconsciousness by the end.

The moment they returned, most of them collapsed into bed.

Several were still fast asleep in their quarters.

Ben himself had only recently awakened and wasn’t fully alert.

Compared to that, Kade seemed almost unnatural.

He had returned from the operation, attended the Third Princess’s banquet that very night, and then come straight back to work the next day.

Attending the birthday banquet had been unavoidable, but…

I never want to go through another forced march like that again.

As Ben silently revisited the miserable schedule, something suddenly occurred to him.

Wait.

Wasn’t the subjugation pace unusually fast even before Lana arrived with the invitation?

He vividly remembered the sight of the Tower Lord pushing ahead so quickly that the rear teams struggled to keep up.

Of course, he had no intention of asking about it.

Maybe intimidating government officials stopped being entertaining, so he needed a new outlet.

At least now Kade could hold a conversation.

Before leaving the Magic Tower, he’d been almost impossible to deal with.

Ben doubted that ruthless, razor-sharp temperament had truly disappeared.

“How much leave can we give the subjugation force?”

“If we want to grant extended leave, it would be difficult to let everyone rest at once. But we could divide them into three groups and rotate them.”

“We won’t need to go back out to sea for at least a month.”

“That’s true, but the barrier is still…”

Ben became even more cautious.

Kade frowned and let out a bitter smile.

He gazed out the window at the magical barrier surrounding the Magic Tower and infused it with mana.

Hummmmm—

A sharp ringing sound filled the air as his mana flowed into the barrier.

For a moment it seemed as though the barrier would strengthen.

Then part of Kade’s mana bounced back.

Kade wasn’t surprised.

It was clearly something he’d expected.

Only Ben looked increasingly anxious.

Since the death of the previous Tower Lord, the cracked barrier had never fully recovered.

Personnel were needed to guard the barrier stone and prevent the barrier from collapsing entirely.

Ben had a fairly good idea why things had turned out this way.

“What about the investigation I told you to conduct?”

“We still don’t have definitive proof, but we’ve found more people who claim they saw a carriage bearing the imperial crest on the day the mages died.”

The problem was the lack of hard evidence.

The Empire knew about the previous Tower Lord’s death.

What most people didn’t know was that several other mages had died around the same time.

And every one of those deaths contained suspicious inconsistencies.

The imperial family is definitely involved.

But suspicion alone isn’t enough.

Rumor had it that the Imperial Palace had tried to install the Second Princess—the Grand Duke of Melgot—as the new Tower Lord.

Had the previous Tower Lord’s will not been discovered at the last moment, they probably would have succeeded.

As Kade sat deep in thought, Ben finally gathered his courage and spoke.

“The barrier won’t collapse anytime soon.”

“…”

Kade turned toward him as though wondering what he was talking about.

Flustered, Ben pointed at the window.

“Y-You’ve been looking outside for a while now, so I thought…”

“Have I?”

Kade straightened his clothes and dismissed him.

“You can go.”

After Ben left, Kade remained alone in the office.

Yet his gaze continued drifting toward the window.

Is she not coming today? She said she’d wait.

After checking the time, he clicked his tongue.

Even then, Kade continued staring outside for quite a while.

But Vivian never appeared.

She didn’t come the next day either.

Or the day after that.

Doesn’t she have work to do?

She made such a fuss about getting documents stamped. Has she already given up?

The mages spent several days quietly tiptoeing around their increasingly irritable Tower Lord, having no idea what had put him in such a foul mood.

Until Vivian finally walked through the doors of the Magic Tower.

Looking utterly exhausted from a string of late nights at work.