The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living - Chapter 222

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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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Part Two, Episode 27
He quivered his lips and began wiping away tears.
‘Good heavens, he really is crying.’
The situation called for further pressure, but Leopold and I both held our tongues for now.
I glanced sideways at Leopold.
It was my fiancé whom I hadn’t seen in six years, yet the situation was so urgent that we hadn’t managed a proper conversation.
Maximus and Gillab were both talkative people, and they’d given us no opportunity to speak.
Just then, the reception room door swung open with a bang.
“What?”
It was Alpheus, looking as though he’d just clawed his way up from the depths of hell.
“Leopold’s here?”
A glimmer of madness flickered in his pale blue eyes.
Leopold flinched slightly and took a small step back.
He must have been still practicing swordwork in the Training Grounds and had only now come up after receiving word.
“The Nogen Grand Duke I knew occasionally showed a shred of conscience.”
Alpheus spoke with a wide smile.
“So this must be one of those moments—you’ve come to break off the engagement?”
Though his eyes didn’t smile at all.
“At least for now you’re wearing the shape of a person, not a beast!”
The way he phrased it—that at least he wasn’t a wolf—showed his thoroughness about security right to the end.
“Besides, an Annulment Letter is just passing along a scrap of paper one way, isn’t it? The way you used to do it!”
But he deployed a technique of “dwelling on the past” that he hadn’t even done before.
“Brisa, let’s just hand over the paper and be done with it! Oh, do you need a flower basket too?”
Leopold, uncharacteristically, seemed quite flustered and couldn’t say a word.
But even Maximus, who should have been calming Alpheus down, was pretending not to notice.
‘Why isn’t he stopping Alpheus? This is a golden chance to put the Western Region in debt.’
Rather, Maximus casually piled on.
“We could just pick some from that flower field over there.”
He pointed toward the ominous flowers visible through the window.
“Gillab Divostan would be quite pleased too. He’d certainly want to reduce the population count by at least a few. Wouldn’t you agree, Nogen Grand Duke?”
Leopold then answered slowly.
“Well… if those flowers must be plucked to console a weeping person, then I shall pluck them myself. I cannot have my fiancée’s hands damaged.”
At those words, Gillab cried out, wiping his tears.
“Who’s weeping? Who says I’m weeping?!”
“My fiancée.”
Then Alpheus leaped to his feet.
“What, did you catch some disease where you call Brisa your fiancée? Huh?”
In the end, only I could break the deadlock of this situation.
“Alpheus, read the room.”
I gestured to Gillab, who was dropping tears in steady streams.
“Now’s not the time for that conversation.”
Only then did Alpheus notice Gillab, and he hesitated, taking a step back.
“What, what is it? What’s… what’s happened?”
A sigh escaped me at the thought of explaining the situation again. If the food problem wasn’t resolved and the vampires started pushing their numerical advantage, we’d be in considerable trouble.
Leopold’s information was certainly important, but set against the amount of data we’d gathered, I couldn’t think of any real solution.
Harvesting flowers, eating them in secret, and needing more than just a few blooms……
‘Just what about that flower are they eating, and how?’
Flowers aren’t normally eaten. Even when occasionally prepared as delicacies, they’re never made a staple food.
So I had precious few ideas. The truth was, it had never been my concern.
I had no sense of how to solve it at all.
‘But why should I be the one to solve this? Can’t I just hole up in Sears with Alpheus? No one’s actually given me responsibility for the solution, have they?’
I sighed and thought it over.
‘In the end, this land is Gillab’s affair, and the rise and fall of the Empire is the Royal Family’s matter.’
But then the “avoidance born of trauma” that Maximus had pointed out began to kick in.
‘Gillab doesn’t even go near the flower field because he says there are bees there, and now he’ll be even more anxious to— wait. Hold on.’
A thought flickered across my mind.
I shot to my feet.
“Honeybees!”
And I cried out loudly:
“We need to examine the honeybees in that flower field!”
* * *
Alpheus soon brought back a few honeybees.
“Easy enough. A machine doesn’t get stung by bees.”
His mechanical arm was well-suited for bee capture.
After drug treatment, all the bees fell unconscious.
“Well, I’m no entomologist, but……”
I searched for books while examining the honeybees carefully.
Fortunately, Gillab’s mansion had books about bees.
“Let’s see… the honey stomach… hmm.”
Honeybees store flower nectar in a special pouch inside their bodies called the honey stomach, carry it back to the hive, and then work with the other bees to evaporate the moisture and concentrate it into honey.
“Oh.”
Alpheus came closer and spoke.
“This looks like honey. It has a faint pinkish tinge to it, I’d say.”
I’d actually dissected the flower before. Naturally, the flower had nectar, and I’d confirmed that too. But it was such a minuscule amount that distinguishing its color had been difficult.
“Well… since I’m not an entomologist, I can’t quite tell from this whether something’s wrong with these bees. They look ordinary enough?”
“No.”
I exhaled a long sigh and spoke.
“These aren’t ordinary honeybees. No normal honeybee carries this much honey with it.”
“Huh?”
Alpheus tilted his head in confusion.
“A honeybee carrying lots of honey? Even so, it’s barely a drop?”
“Alpheus.”
I spoke while examining another bee’s condition.
“A single honeybee produces about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime.”
“What?”
Alpheus was aghast.
“Good grief, working that hard their entire lives and they can only gather that much?”
“That’s right.”
I answered without much enthusiasm.
“That’s why beekeeping works by taking honey that bees have stored and aged in the hive—not by capturing the bees this way.”
“My goodness, honeybees are so cute and pitiful! Our friends who protect nature!”
“By that logic, these honeybees are very likely not our friends.”
The other bees were all the same.
Their honey stomachs were abnormally large. For a bee to gather a full drop of honey was an extraordinary amount.
Of course, most ordinary people meeting honeybees would think, like Alpheus, ‘there’s nothing unusual here’……
‘They’re not eating the flowers themselves—they’re eating the honey.’
And I’d made sure to study everything related to food.
I had relevant knowledge about honey, not flowers or bees.
Leopold asked quietly.
“But Brisa, couldn’t there simply be a variant species of honeybee with larger honey stomachs? Can you really conclude it’s an experiment involving Dark Magic?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“If the honey stomach were that large, the bee’s flight speed would have to be slower. But I didn’t sense that at all. Eight years ago, the ants that suddenly grew also defied physics—it was definitely artificial Dark Magic at work.”
If they flew slowly, predators would easily catch and eat them. The population couldn’t be maintained at normal levels.
Yet these honeybees were clearly forming colonies in a perfectly ordinary way. This was definitely not a normal phenomenon.
“I need to check the hive.”
I sighed and stood up.
“Something about the honey they’re collecting feels off. Or maybe it’s not honey at all.”
Sebon’s Dark Mages had already modified and enlarged ants before. Wasn’t it the case that giant ants on this land were tending to Summer Wheat crops?
Creating honeybees with enlarged honey stomachs would certainly be well within the Dark Mages’ capabilities by now.
The moment I stood up, Maximus and Leopold, who’d been standing nearby with anxious expressions, cried out simultaneously.
“Let’s go together.”
“We’re going with you.”
I looked at both of them, shrugged once, and spoke.
“Were you not planning to go? Leopold, you’ve been tracking this matter, and Your Highness is in charge of the investigation. Everyone, hurry and prepare. We’ll need supplies.”
Gillab, who’d been standing at the door in fear that the bees might wake and swarm, cried out.
“Do I, do I have to go too?”
“No. Just wait here.”
“Y-yes, that makes sense. I’m responsible for the territory, so I can’t afford to get hurt……”
“That’s not it. If you run around screaming, it’ll ruin everything.”
The drug-treated bees made him tremble; there was no way Gillab could hold it together next to the hive.
“We’re busy enough just bringing the hive. We can’t look after you too if you faint.”

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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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