Please Leave The Sickly Villainess Alone

The Tower Master suddenly stopped his movement, then burst into laughter.

He was on the verge of tears from laughing.

“You really are hilarious. If you become my disciple, I’ll cherish you even more.”

At those words, I suddenly began to deeply regret it, but what could I do?

My unemployed lifestyle had already become no different from a ship that had sailed away.

The Tower Master walked towards me and said:

“Come. I’ll tell you the secret of magic ore.”

We headed to the 79th floor, one floor below.

This was where powerful mages, including the Tower Master’s top disciples, were stationed.

The Tower Master was already picking out my spot as we passed by.

“That spot over there gets good sunlight and is good for slacking off, do you like it?”

“Yes… I like it.”

The place the Tower Master led us to had furnaces constantly running with fire magic.

Magic ores cut to uniform sizes were being refined into high-purity ones.

“Magic ore is extremely sensitive to handle. Because it’s so tricky to refine. Most people in the Magic Tower don’t know the process of refining magic ore. You could call it a trade secret.”

I already knew that from what I had heard from the president.

Not only new recruits like him, but even high-ranking mages didn’t know it…

“Yes, I’m about to tell you a trade secret right now. Don’t disclose it anywhere, only know it within the Duke’s mansion.”

“Of course!”

I nodded my head vigorously.

The Tower Master showed me crystal flowers going into the melted magic ore coming out of the furnace and said:

“It’s Cressia flowers crystallized using Elmarsha solution. When those two ingredients meet, they can remove impurities that stubbornly cling to magic ore.”

“Cre…ssia?”

That was a flower commonly found in flower shops. I had never heard of Elmarsha solution though.

“It would take all day to explain how the reaction occurs, do you want to hear it? I’d be happy to get closer to the child who will soon become my top disciple.”

I waved my hand at the Tower Master who was chuckling and speaking mischievously.

“That’s… okay!”

“Hmm, what a shame… Oh right, that fellow. Rizen, I mean. He’s smart, so he’ll understand right away if you tell him. Though I can’t say I’m fond of a fellow who left the Magic Tower on his own, he was exceptionally bright!”

It was surprising that the Tower Master remembered everything from the president’s name to his abilities.

There were thousands of mages in the Magic Tower alone, and the president was a mage who had given up midway without being able to climb above the 50th floor.

“His failure to produce results wasn’t because of his abilities. Yes, literally, he just wasn’t chosen by the elders, nothing more, nothing less… Thinking about it again, it was quite an uninteresting affair.”

The Tower Master looked at the spot that was cleared, as if someone had left the Magic Tower today too, with aged eyes.

“There were dozens more mages like Rizen, but they all left saying they’d lose their livelihoods. The Magic Tower now is too boring…”

“You can change it again. Before it’s too late.”

“Yes… I heard the imperial palace is trying to select the next healing mage quite hastily, which means the day you become my disciple isn’t far off.”

“How do you know I won’t be chosen as an imperial mage?”

“Those imperial magic department bastards, except for one, are all tainted with pure-blood supremacy. While the Magic Tower is mostly commoners, the imperial palace can be considered to be made up of only nobles who are noble from birth. It’s clear who they’ll choose between the two.”

The one person the Tower Master was referring to seemed to be the elderly mage who welcomed me whenever I went to the imperial palace.

I nodded. It had become a clear reason.

“You’re not disheartened by my words, are you? I’m the type who doesn’t care about such things, so I said it without much thought.”

“I don’t really care either, but everyone around me keeps getting worked up about it. I’m fine.”

“Keke… If you meet such a fellow again, you can blast them away with the Alexer you just learned.”

The Tower Master grinned at me face to face.

“Yes, I’ll make this Magic Tower a slightly more interesting place until you enter as my disciple.”

“…It’s a promise.”

I carefully raised my hand and held out my pinky to him.

The Tower Master looked at me as if looking at a granddaughter and promised with a big smile.

“This is a day that particularly makes me miss my first disciple.”

‘First disciple…?’

“Now, off you go. Next time we meet, call me just ‘Master’ instead of ‘Tower Master’ since we’re teacher and student.”

Saying that, he turned around and disappeared instantly from my sight.

Jen, seeming to have read my curious expression, opened his mouth with a smirk:

“The first disciple was Gasent, the previous imperial healing mage.”

“How could he be Neuw’s disciple if he was the imperial healing mage?”

“Gasent didn’t manifest healing magic from the start, he was originally a regular mage. He was in the Magic Tower then.”

“Ah…”

“It seems he poured a lot of affection into him as his first disciple. When Gasent passed away first, he even lived in seclusion for several years.”

Jen said with a small smile.

“Come to think of it, maybe he’s being so kind to you, his granddaughter, because you resemble Gasent.”

Those words gave me a strange feeling.

* * *

I returned to the Duke’s mansion again.

Jen returned to the Magic Tower, and I immediately burst through the door and ran to the president’s laboratory set up in the annex.

Despite the sunset beginning to fall, the lights in the president’s lab were still on.

These days, voices of concern for his health were heard here and there, and the president I faced when I opened the door really looked like he might collapse if touched lightly.

“Miss, what brings you here!”

The president hurriedly approached me with a face that looked like a clump of hair had settled on it.

“How’s it going?”

“Well… I’m sorry, Miss! If I just try a little more…”

The president trailed off.

He who never lost confidence looked depressed for the first time, perhaps thinking it might not work out.

“I… I’m really a worthless fellow. You trusted me and brought me here, and gave me support I couldn’t even dream of at the Magic Tower… Yet, pathetically, I can’t even refine a single pebble.”

The president said with his head bowed low and a tearful voice.

“You can fire me, Miss. I think I’m irresponsible too, but I can’t let you keep pouring money into this hopeless me forever.”

“President, who says that? That you’re hopeless.”

“P… President?”

Oops, it was the first time I had called him president.

I had been calling him by name all this time.

He still didn’t know that I was the cloaked Larisha he had met at the Magic Tower.

“Yes, president. You’re the President of the Magic Devices Development Club, aren’t you? You gave me an enthusiastic flyer too, don’t you remember? Jen was there too.”

“C-Could it be! Were you the person introduced as Larisha then?!”

I nodded with a grin.

“Don’t lose courage. Don’t lose confidence. That’s all we have.”

At my words, the president looked at me with wavering eyes.

“Where did that passionate young man from back then go? The president who went up and down the Magic Tower looking for club members.”

“Miss, sometimes you don’t seem like a child. Because you give the warmest words…”

The tip of the president’s nose turned red.

“Haha- Don’t be discouraged, president. I found out how to refine magic ore.”

“Is, is that true…?!”

“They say if you put Cressia flowers crystallized with Elmarsha solution into melted magic ore in the furnace, the impurities separate.”

“Miss, did you perhaps visit the Magic Tower? They wouldn’t have told you that secret so easily… Miss, what on earth did you bet?”

Well… I bet my beautiful unemployed lifestyle.

Come to think of it, I suddenly feel like crying…

I just smiled brightly and said to the president:

“I didn’t bet much. Don’t worry about it.”

“If you say so, Miss… I won’t ask any further. Anyway, Cressia flowers with Elmarsha solution… I see! Then it might be possible, no, it’s definitely possible!”

The president shouted with sunken eyes.

The joy of knowing the answer he had been racking his brains over for months was short-lived, as he slumped again.

“But this is no different from me stealing your achievement. I…”

“There’s no law that says achievements must be born from one’s own hands. The president has made endless efforts… You have the right to have no hesitation in obtaining such results. Who could say it was easily obtained?”

I looked around the messy laboratory with thousands of formulas written by the president and glasses lenses broken several times, and said:

“It must be hard to concentrate with such chaos. I’ll call someone to clean it all up, so get a good rest today. Start again tomorrow with a fresh mind. Oh, and since the refining method can’t be disclosed…”

I didn’t want to go this far either, but I tore up the magic scroll I had received from Jen.

The magic engraved on it settled on the lips of the president and me.

“It’s absolutely forbidden. This can’t be helped.”

At my words, tears finally fell drop by drop from the president’s eyes.

I hurriedly said in panic:

“Ah, w-were you surprised? This only prevents us from talking about the refining method, it doesn’t hurt at all… That’s right, they put this magic on me too. Right after I told you!”

“Sniff, sniff, huuuk… For life, I’ll work for you for life… I will, definitely! For you…”

“…”

The president was crying for a different reason.

I handed him a handkerchief and said:

“Not just for me, but for other mages like you too. And above all, president, you need to take care of yourself too.”

What is this, looking like a walking corpse…

At this rate, no one would find it strange if he died from overwork.

I smiled, closing my eyes which had suddenly become teary.

“Let’s definitely sit on a money cushion.”

“Yes, definitely on a money cushion…!”

I thought I could hear the Tower Master’s shouting voice from somewhere.