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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: The Magic Tower Lord's Monthly Rent
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“You're bullying me right now! Me!”
Magic Tower Lord Majia shouted, hiding his finger with its clear teeth marks.
“You bastard, you're a person! Not a cat!”
“I'm gonna bite Grandma!”
“This guy won't even listen to me with half an ear!”
Just then, Dether appeared with drinks and guided Majia to the annex.
Nibelria and Arep followed closely behind him, each clutching a glass of drink.
Kruuuh, Nibelria murmured as she took a sip of the sweet drink.
Arep glanced at her, then quietly sipped his own drink and mimicked her in a tiny voice. Kruuuh.
“Magic Tower Lord.”
“What now...”
He had only just arrived at the mansion, yet Majia was already exhausted.
“Why'd you come to Nini's house?”
“I didn't come to see you. It's business.”
“Magic Tower Lord works too? Nini works too!”
Nibelria darted ahead of the Magic Tower Lord and handed her glass to Dether.
In the meantime, Arep was left alone to endure Majia's peculiar gaze.
“......”
For some reason, Arep shrank back and averted his eyes. Then he bolted to Nibelria's side as if fleeing.
Only then did Majia withdraw his gaze, his face showing regret for his mistake.
Nibelria returned and spoke up.
“Nini has no debt now? Paid it off with work?”
“What, you had debt?”
“1.28 million Uba.”
“...What the hell have you been getting up to?”
They arrived at the annex just as Ardores was heading to the reception room.
Majia thrust his tooth-marked finger at him and growled.
“Holy Knight! Got nothing to say about my finger?”
“The bone's healed nicely.”
“Your granddaughter bit me! I was the victim of violence!”
“Did you point your finger at my granddaughter? You had it coming.”
“Discipline her, you fool!”
“Grandpa's not a fool! He's the boss!”
Nibelria jumped in.
“In my eyes, after living over two hundred years, you all look like fools.”
“The one calling fools is the fool!”
“No? Everyone except the Magic Tower Lord is a fool?”
The bickering between the Magic Tower's two-hundred-year-old head and the four-year-old who used to be a cat in her past life was utterly pathetic.
“Anyway, glad you came. You kids listen in too.”
Ardores gave Majia a pitiful glance before leading the children into the reception room as well.
“First, my business.”
Majia sat down and lightly snapped his fingers.
A round hole suddenly appeared in midair, and a heavy money pouch dropped noisily below it.
Arep couldn't believe his eyes and quickly looked up.
But the hole from moments ago had vanished in the blink of an eye.
“Surprised?”
Majia smirked obnoxiously. Huht.
“This is magic right he—”
“Money!”
“...Haa. I really, really hate this cat.”
The pouch that had fallen from the sky was stuffed full of coins. And not just any coins—these were gold coins made of pure gold.
Nibelria couldn't tear her eyes away from them.
That gold coins were the most valuable currency was one of the key bits of common sense she'd picked up amid two years of failures.
“Magic Tower Lord.”
“What?”
“This is Nini's, right?”
“Why do you say it like it's so obvious...”
Majia lightly smacked Nibelria's forehead to snap her out of her dream.
This money was the monthly rent for the building and land he had to pay Ardores.
“This month's rent, Holy Knight.”
“You didn't skim any off the top, did you?”
“Your granddaughter just proved who she takes after. She's got the money-grubbing thug vibe of her ex-Holy Knight grandpa.”
“What's a thug?”
Nibelria rubbed her smacked forehead and asked.
“Someone like your grandfather.”
“Then it's cool?”
“Even a hedgehog thinks its own young are pretty, but this is the reverse.”
Ardores measured the gold coins' weight and volume with a scale he'd prepared in advance. It was a magic tool the Magic Tower Lord had made long ago.
“Grandpa.”
Nibelria sidled up and asked.
“What's rent?”
“It's money that people without enough to buy their own house pay to borrow someone else's.”
“Magic Tower Lord has no house? Still no house at that age?”
“Exactly. Two hundred years old and still no house.”
Grandpa and granddaughter tag-teamed to rake Majia's nerves raw.
Majia barely suppressed his boiling rage.
Damn landlord and landowner!
If it weren't for the rent, he'd have given her eight solid chestnuts by now!
The great Magic Tower—a tower of knowledge that had greatly contributed to the empire's technological progress—was currently living month-to-month on rent.
And the landlord and landowner? None other than Ardores, former marquess of the Dayamor family.
The Magic Tower had to fork over a fortune in rent every month.
I never should've had that drink back then...!
The Magic Tower building hadn't always been Ardores's.
Forty years ago.
Near the end of the Crepatna War, waged to exterminate the monsters.
Majia finally let himself drink for the first time in ages, celebrating the war's nearing end, and got properly plastered.
In his drunken stupor, he let slip a fatal blunder.
“If the Saintess and Holy Knight, hic! hit it off and get married, uh? This Magic Tower Lord will gift you the building and land, urp!”
Everyone brushed it off as the ravings of a drunkard.
But Majia, pissed at being ignored, cast a permanent, unbreakable oath spell right there on the spot.
And the moment the war ended...
Saintess Muniel and Holy Knight Ardores received the Magic Tower building and land as a wedding gift.
As everyone cheered that day, Majia wept bloody tears in plain view.
It was the most humiliating moment of his over two-hundred-year life.
“Magic Tower Lord.”
Even now, recalling his own idiocy made his body tremble—then Nibelria sidled up and patted his knee.
“Cat...”
Is she trying to comfort me?
Was a child's body heat against his knee always this warm?
Majia's eyes stung with emotion.
“Scoot over a bit. Nini wants to lie down.”
“......”
Majia stood, sulking like he wasn't worth his years. Nibelria promptly sprawled on the sofa.
“Got your rent? I'm outta here.”
“One request first.”
“Unless it's knocking off some rent, not listening.”
“Listen, and I'll consider it.”
“...Well, I'm already here. Might as well have some tea.”
Majia, half out of his seat, sank back down smoothly. Nibelria's legs ended up under his butt, but he paid it no mind.
Ardores spoke up.
“Can you enroll Nini and Arep in the Magic Tower's affiliated kindergarten?”
“Are you insane? Have you finally lost it?”
“The Magic Tower kindergarten is for the children of our affiliated wizards, not to drag in outsiders like this—what's the plan?”
“That granddaughter of the rent-squeezing miser Holy Knight? A Dayamor?”
“I swear, that time you got drunk and started your bullshit—no one stopped you, and that's my one regret!”
The Magic Tower elders exploded at Majia's decision.
They were already going mad from forty years of shelling out rent they never should've had to pay—now they had to take in Dayamor brats too?!
The elders vehemently opposed, veins bulging in their necks.
Amid it all, only Majia stayed calm.
He wore a serene expression, as if he'd alone grasped the universe's truths and ascended to a higher realm.
Majia spoke softly.
“If we take the kids, no more rent.”
The elders flew into an even greater rage.
“Why didn't you bring them sooner?!”
“Sure, the Magic Tower kindergarten is for wizards' children, but discriminating against outsiders? Is that a kindergarten?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Magic Tower Lord, what are you waiting for? Dig into your own pockets and buy them snacks!”
Majia stifled his irritation at the elders' instant about-face, but he held his tongue—after all, he was the culprit who'd handed over the Tower.
I wonder if that one's behaving...
After shooing out the noisy elders, Majia recalled his conversation with Ardores in the now-quiet room.
“She can't live like a housecat forever.”
“Learning rules and norms by mingling with peers is step one...”
“My daughter-in-law did set up a boys' annex kindergarten, but if I send her there, she'll just cause a scene looking for her mom.”
So he's not just spoiling her rotten.
He'd been tempted by the promise of skipped rent for a few months, but now Majia was starting to worry if his choice was right.
Can the kindergarten even handle her?
Majia fretted only about Nibelria.
Wolf'll be fine.
That one had always been docile, even forty years ago.
Should've slipped him some candy when we met at the mansion.
Reincarnated or not, his face was still boyishly stern, but his personality remained quietly composed.
The problem is that cheeky cat who played boss on top of Wolf's head.
What if she starts acting like the boss at kindergarten and causes trouble?
Majia boarded the lift with such worries.
Or will she just cry? She's shy with strangers, after all...
He'd have to stop by later to check.
Ding-dong. The lift reached the top floor.
Shrrk. As the doors slid open, Majia stepped out—and froze.
“......”
“......”
Nibelria, who had been toddling around the lab, also stopped in her tracks.
The two stared at each other in silence for a long moment.
Majia spoke first.
“...Cat, what are you doing here?”
“...Not doing anything?”
“Why aren't you at kindergarten?”
“......”
Nibelria averted her eyes like a guilty cat.
She stealthily lowered the hand she'd stretched out toward something.
“Nini just, uh, just hanging out...”
“......”
Majia eyed the desk Nibelria had been looking at.
There, on a brass tray, sat the black metal lump he'd been asked to appraise a few months back.
