The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 19

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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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Episode 19.

***

One hour earlier.
“Sleep well, Celine.”
“Yes! Your Highness, you too!”
Celine checked my bed one last time before slipping from the chamber.
The door closed completely, and her light footsteps faded rapidly down the corridor.
I glanced at the wall clock the moment she was gone.
Midnight had already passed.
‘Good. Time to make my move.’
I bolted upright and threw on the gray Cloak I’d prepared in advance.
I pulled on Gloves that covered my arms entirely, drew the hood down tight, and wrapped a thin Scarf up past my eyes.
It was a perfect disguise.
‘Even I wouldn’t recognize myself.’
I checked my reflection once more in the mirror, then carefully eased the chamber door open and slipped out.
My mind retraced the path I’d memorized while touring the Imperial Palace with Celine earlier that day.
I watched the patrol cycles of the Knights standing guard and crept silently into the westernmost room on the first floor.
‘Breathe.’
Click. I shut the door gently behind me and surveyed the empty room slowly.
The air was cool—the room had clearly been abandoned for some time.
‘It’ll stay empty until Floria awakens.’
That was right. In the original novel, this was the room where Floria, newly awakened as the Saint, would hide for a time.
And when the Imperial Palace came under siege, Floria would use the Secret Passage in this room to escape to the abandoned Chapel behind Capital Square.
Even the Crown Prince Cain wouldn’t know of this passage until then.
‘I never thought I’d be the first to use a passageway I’d only ever read about in print.’
I approached the cold, dark fireplace and thrust my hand deep into its frigid interior.
My fingertips brushed rough brick.
‘It should be around here…’
I focused my touch, feeling my way along the fireplace wall, when—
—one brick caught my fingertips, jutting out slightly from the rest.
I pressed it hard, and with a deep, mechanical rumble, the enormous bookcase beside the fireplace slid soundlessly backward.
A pitch-black passage yawned open—barely wide enough for a single adult to squeeze through.
‘Incredible.’
I gasped softly and threw myself into the darkness without hesitation.

***

And so, having navigated the passage and emerged from the other side, I found myself here.
An herb shop in the Back Alley of the Capital.
“Grandfather, you’ve mixed these up again. This is Laxative, not Digestive Medicine. Are you trying to poison someone?!”
I’d barely managed to slip away from the main street and was now breaking a sweat as I helped the elderly herb shop proprietor sort through his stock.
“I’d love to stay and organize everything through the night, but I really do need to get back soon.”
“Then come back tomorrow and help. A shopkeeper should have some pride in their own stock!”
“It’s your shop, Grandfather!”
“Ah, that’s right, isn’t it?”
The proprietor chuckled and stroked his beard.
I couldn’t help but laugh at his scattered response.
It was then.
“Proprietor.”
A low voice dropped down onto me from above as I crouched among the shelves, sorting herbs and toxic plants.
Two men in black garb, their faces hidden beneath hoods and Face Masks, loomed over us.
They cut an extraordinarily suspicious figure—though it wasn’t unusual for such Back Alley herb shops to see customers cloaking their identities when making purchases.
I was doing the same thing, after all: voice altered, face completely concealed.
As it turned out, these were the men the grandfather had been expecting; he perked up and rose to his feet.
“Ah! There you are! Let’s talk upstairs, shall we? I’ve been waiting for you.”
The grandfather hastily led one of the men toward the narrow wooden staircase that climbed to the second floor.
I stared in disbelief, poking my head out from beneath the shelf to call out to my grandfather.
“Wait, grandfather! What about these herbs?”
And what about me?!
“I’ll be back shortly! Please finish what’s left!”
My grandfather chuckled carelessly and bounded up the stairs without another word.
Unbelievable.
Anyone would think I was this house’s granddaughter, the way he carries on.
I crouched back down and was brushing the dirt from my hands when it happened.
Another man, who hadn’t followed my grandfather upstairs and had been standing silently by the doorway, took a quiet step toward me.
“You remember me, don’t you?”
“…Huh?”
Still crouching, I held my scarf in place to keep it from slipping and looked up.
Who is this?
His voice, filtered through the face mask he wore, was difficult to recognize.
Though I supposed the same applied to me.
I’d wrapped myself in layers from head to chin, leaving only my eyes exposed, worried some tail might have followed me here.
With a scarf thicker than the face mask wound around the lower half of my face, neither my features nor my voice would be easy to identify.
‘Someone recognizes me like this and speaks to me?’
That’s suspicious.
I studied the man with narrowed eyes.
‘Could he be from Billot Village? Or did the Guild send him?!’
But the moment our eyes met—
‘Strange. I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before…’
Beneath the hood’s shadow lay eyes that were captivating yet sharp, arrogant in their set. Within them swirled a deep, cool blackness.
Looking into those eyes, thick with curiosity fixed on me, I felt an odd sense of familiarity.
Then the memory struck.
“Ah!”
I jerked to my feet and cried out.
“The tree!”
At that, the sharp eyes softened ever so slightly.
“It was you who climbed the tree, not me.”
“Yes! That’s right! Wow, you remember that?”
“It was quite a striking moment.”
His reply, dry yet playful in its deflection, drew something like inner warmth from me, and I smiled with my eyes.
“We meet again.”
“Are you from the Capital?”
“No.”
“The North, then?”
“Hmm.”
I hesitated at his question.
It struck me anew that I was in no position to claim a home with certainty.
I couldn’t speak of Billot Village as my birthplace, nor was the Duchy where I now stayed truly mine.
I gave an awkward shrug.
“I don’t really have a fixed home. I travel about looking for herbs.”
At my answer, the man nodded.
“An herbalist, then. Did you formally study Herbalism?”
I shook my head.
“No. I never received proper training. I’m the type who learns through experience, by doing. And as you might imagine, for a woman to study Herbalism formally isn’t easy.”
Not in this Empire, anyway, I added silently.
Beyond the matter of money, in the Castillo Empire, a commoner woman learning Herbalism was practically impossible.
Why else would they burn women to death as witches for merely knowing a little about herbs, poisons, and potions?
They’d actually abandoned me in the forest because of it.
As my expression turned bitter, the man’s eyes dimmed with what seemed like understanding.
“That narrow-mindedness has made it difficult to find talented people with real knowledge of herbs.”
“Exactly! That’s exactly what I’m saying!”
I nodded vigorously and smiled, then asked, “You’re surprisingly easy to talk to. Do you like herbs, by any chance?”
“I work closely with herbs by profession.”
Oh! I asked eagerly.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what is your profession?”

“…….”
The man considered my question only briefly.
“A Knight.”
“Oh! How magnificent! So you were a Knight! That explains it!”
Your build is so sturdy, your frame so impressive!
I found myself clapping without thinking. He looked taken aback and asked in return.
“……Is it magnificent?”
I answered him brightly.
“Of course! A Knight is the embodiment of sublime effort that breaks through one’s limits—the crystallization of perseverance and endurance, bearing solitude itself!”
“…….”
At my fervent reply, the man fell silent for a moment.
I brushed the herbal dust from the tips of my gloves as I continued.
“Anyone can wield a sword, but not everyone can reach that station. I know that.”
Running through battlefields while others rest at their ease, standing as a bulwark for someone even if your own body shatters—to dedicate a lifetime to that.
“Those who grind down their own today for someone else’s tomorrow. That’s why I think the profession of Knight is grander than any high station in the world.”
“…….”
The man said nothing in response to my words.
I pulled my scarf back up to just below my eyes, smiling a touch sheepishly.
“I see you use Recovery Potions and Antidotes mostly. So that’s why you said your trade is close to herbalism.”
“That’s correct.”
“Do you gather the herbs yourself?”
“Largely, yes.”
“Oh, that’s no easy task if you don’t know herbs at all!”
“I can distinguish medicinal herbs from poisonous ones to some degree.”
“Perfect, then! Help me with this, will you?”
“…….”
“You see, the shop owner’s grandfather has poor eyesight, so the inventory sorting is rather chaotic.”
I dragged the man to a shelf in the corner below and forced him to help organize the herbs.
In truth, I had sorted most of it myself, and the man simply listened quietly to the herb descriptions I provided.
In between, he naturally shared stories of his own.
He spoke calmly about the rigorous life of a Knight—the moments in battle when rare herbs were vital because of mutated Magical Beast venom or fatal wounds.
And I passionately held forth about rare herbs that grew across the continent in both the South and North, explaining how best to combine them for combat and emergency situations.
The conversation flowed with surprising ease.
The man didn’t dismiss my words lightly.
He listened in silence, asked clarifying questions where needed, and genuinely marveled at the herbal knowledge I possessed.
The more we talked, the warmer something deep in my chest became.
In this moment, I was not the false princess of Delmar—just an herbalist named Evelyn, breathing freely.
I would have talked with this stranger through the entire night if I could.
Perhaps this was how much loneliness I’d been carrying alone in this strange world.
That was when it happened.
Crash—!!
An enormous sound exploded from the second floor.

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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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