Master, I Swear I Didn’t Mean To! - Chapter 2

What was worse, Cassius entrusted all miscellaneous tasks to her. From organizing magic potions to receiving the mail, coordinating schedules, cleaning the laboratory, and even meal preparation!

‘Forget about me. Take care of your own meals yourself.’

Whether that was fortunate or not, at least it didn’t mean preparing Cassius’s meals. Eki only had to make her own food.

‘Unbelievable.’

The reason a mage entered a Mage Tower was to smoothly pursue magical research. Most towers had servants who attended the mage, taking care of everything so that the mage had no concern outside the use of magic.

Eki had worked herself to the bone at the Academy for the past seven years in order to become a mage who could earn well and study magic to her heart’s content.

Yet because she entered the wrong tower, she now had to live like her master-teacher’s slave.

She would have left this dog of a tower at once. If only her teacher and superior, Cassius, had not been so dazzlingly beautiful.

‘He can’t possibly be human.’

Cassius was maddeningly beautiful.

Hair as white as if moonlight had fallen on a clear night, soft green eyes that evoked the spring, skin so pale and smooth as though it had never once seen sunlight, and features both finely drawn and beautifully defined.

Even his body was perfect. Disliking the bother of layering on clothes, he would often wear nothing more than a long, old-fashioned flowing robe with just a sash tied at the waist. Each time, the broad muscles of his chest and the smooth lines of his waist would be displayed as if showing themselves off.

‘The best welfare benefit is a beautiful face.’

Eki adored beauty. To such a degree that her friends coined the ridiculous term ‘Beauty Cult Supremo’ to describe her.

To Eki, a beautiful person was something to be admired like a sacred mural. Just seeing one swept away the dark clouds hanging in her heart and blew off all unpleasant feelings pressing on her chest. If she could only live while gazing at beauty, she would have gladly entered a temple and become a nun.

And yet her master was this perfect.

But, as they say, people live up to their looks. Cassius had a flawless appearance, but a personality that’s utterly dog-like in contrast.

‘Eki, why isn’t the spell formula prepared yet?’

‘Eki, I told you to clean that room first!’

‘Eki!’

That constant, Eki, Eki, EKI!

Cassius’s character was rotten to the core. To say merely that it was ‘bad’ was a severe understatement. He worked Eki to the bone whenever he could, and whenever he couldn’t, he belittled her as a fool.

‘Don’t tell me you can’t even understand this?’

‘How did you ever graduate from the Academy?’

‘Pathetic. Forget it. Just stick to basic theory.’

When she had just entered the Thousand Tower, she had been so bewitched by his looks that she often blundered. But Eki was a fledgling who had only just graduated from the Academy, while he was an archmage who had studied magic for centuries. And still, he never failed, not even for a single day, to harass her.

‘Damn Cursius.’

Because of Cassius, Eki’s insides rotted, and because of Cassius, she was healed. She lived every day like a seesaw between heaven and hell, hot spring and ice bath.

And when she came to her senses, seven years had already gone by.

“You’re seriously incredible.”

Milla and Giyote, now working as civil officials for the Gailard Mage Association with excellent grades, clicked their tongues.

“How did you manage to live under that man for seven years?”

“They said it was hard to find new people each time mages fled bawling from that place, but thanks to you, our workload got lighter.”

Even Eki herself hadn’t known she was capable of enduring this long. No matter how much of a ‘face card welfare’ there was, having Cur… or rather, Cassius as a teacher-master was a brutal ordeal.

‘Yeah. If not for that, I could never have lasted this far.’

Usually, a Mage Tower ran on the capabilities of its master. The salary of their apprentices or employees was the same.

Since Cassius’s Thousand Dog Tower had only Eki as staff, the only one to receive pay was her. Which meant that Eki was paid enormously. From the labor budget allocated to the Thousand Tower, minus Cassius’s share, everything went to her.

‘I’m rich!’

Yes, Eki was rich. She liked beauty, and she liked money. Even after presenting her parents, who had sacrificed everything for her, with a vast sum, she still had a significant sum left over for herself. That made her happy.

So she stayed in the Thousand Dog Tower, humoring Cassius’s temper tantrums day after day with an ingratiating ‘yesyes’.

Up until today. At least, until that happened…