The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 21

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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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Chapter 21.

***

My breath came hard, rising all the way to my throat.
I braced my palm against the cold stone wall of the secret passage, my head bowed for a long moment.
The inside of my throat still stung. Even though I’d only inhaled the barest whisper of smoke made from Osnis Poison.
‘A vicious toxin. Truly vicious.’
Years ago, when I’d been poisoned before, I’d barely lived through it—and I remembered the agony had been tremendous.
I exhaled slowly, then resumed walking.
Before I’d entered the secret passage, I’d stripped off my cloak and scarf in the nearby forest and left them there.
‘Just in case there were any lingering traces of the poison.’
Perhaps for that reason, the air in the passage felt rather cold against my skin.
I clutched the paper envelope tight to my chest and hurried back through the passage to my bedchamber.
Fortunately, Byeolgung was quiet. My chamber remained exactly as I’d left it.
Only after locking the chamber door securely could I exhale and manage a smile.
“Whew. I’m alive.”
Then I walked straight to the sofa and examined the paper envelope I’d been clutching so carefully.
Creases from my desperate run marked it here and there, clear as scars.
“Oh no. Please tell me it’s not damaged?”
My heart seized with sudden panic, and I quickly emptied the contents onto the table.
With a papery rustle, dried leaves with a faint blue-green luminescence came into view.
“Ah, thank goodness. It’s intact.”
I carefully ran my fingertips along the edge of one leaf.
‘I really do get myself into the strangest situations.’
The reason I’d used the secret passage to slip out of the Imperial Palace today was entirely for this herb called Lumen.
Lumen was a rare medicinal herb that grew wild only on Dermate Island, a small and barren island floating in the middle of the sea at the far western edge of the Empire.
Because it was so rare, it was difficult to obtain even in the Western Region if the timing wasn’t right.
‘Still, medicinal herbs from all across the Empire gather in the Capital, so I went on the chance that I might find some.’
Fortunately, I managed to procure a small amount.
I lifted a fingertip dusted with Lumen powder to my nose and breathed in.
‘Good smell.’
Now, by blending this with certain other medicinal herbs in my own secret proportions, I could create a potion that would dramatically heighten my resistance to both inhaled and contact poisons for a set duration.
‘Only one hour, though.’
That single hour had been wrested from the very limits of possibility through countless hours of research, chewing through poisonous herbs to refine the ratios—a feat only genius like mine could accomplish.
I would stake my life on this: throughout the entire Empire, there is not a single other person who could perfect this formula using Lumen.
Perhaps there isn’t even anyone who knows of this miraculous application of Lumen in the first place.
‘Looking at how the Empire’s elite still fumble about without managing to synthesize even an Osnis Antidote, I’m almost certain of it.’
In any case, the reason I’d risked my life threading through the Imperial Palace’s secret passages just to obtain this Lumen and create a Poison Resistance Potion was singular.
It was because of the Lacrion Mountain Range.
The Lacrion Mountain Range—which the Emperor had tossed to the Grand Duke House like a condescending favor at the breakfast table.
I’d thought the name sounded familiar for some reason.
At first I’d wondered if it was because it appeared in the original work, but that wasn’t it.
I’d first heard of the Lacrion Mountain Range’s sinister reputation three years ago, through the herb journal of Rathens, a wandering herbalist who’d come to Billot Village in the Southern Region.
Whenever he drank, he would always regale us with stories of what he’d seen and heard wandering across the Empire.
Magical beasts in the Northern Territory, poisonous herbs in the southern marshes, dried-up springs in the eastern deserts—most of it was half-exaggeration, but his records on medicinal herbs were always accurate.
That notebook contained an account of the Lacrion Mountain Range.
Land of the dead.
The graveyard of gods.
It was a range characterized by a pale white mist tinged with faint blue-green light that enveloped the entire mountain chain like a barrier.
Long ago, many people had attempted to conquer the Lacrion Mountain Range.
But none who entered the mountains emerged alive.
The records told of how, shortly after venturing in, they would lose the ability to distinguish between friend and foe, attacking one another indiscriminately, or how blisters and rashes would suddenly erupt across their bodies, they would begin coughing blood, and death would claim them.
‘The mist was the problem.’
After many sacrifices, it was discovered that the mist shrouding the range was composed of a toxin whose components were unknown.
No matter how much advanced magic to defend the mind or Divine Potion was applied, without clearly identifying the toxic components dissolved in the mist, even entering became fundamentally impossible—it was an impregnable wall of separation.
“And that’s why no one can confirm what kind of monstrous creatures are growing in the depths of that range. Knights dispatched by the Imperial Family only stand guard at the periphery, dying off as they face demon beasts emerging from that poison-saturated mist.”
As Rathens’s solemn face came back to me—the way he’d filled in the gaps in his journal—I couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh.
“It seemed odd that the Emperor would hand it over so readily.”
From the Imperial Family’s perspective, they could hardly abandon a mountain range from which Magical Beasts kept spilling forth.
To give up defense would damage the Imperial prestige, yet to foist it on someone else would have the nobility having fits of refusal—a headache among headaches.
‘They probably sent knights reluctantly to keep watch, established guard posts, and poured administrative costs into it every year.’
And then, in comes a mad princess from an enemy kingdom as a hostage, suddenly throwing a tantrum for a gift—the Emperor must have silently cheered his luck before tossing it to her as though it were a present.
What a cunning old dog.
‘Come to think of it, the Grand Duke didn’t seem particularly pleased about receiving an entire mountain range the size of several fiefdoms.’
Varcan would have known. That land wasn’t a gift—it was a burden.
Still, it would have been difficult to refuse right then and there. The moment you reject a gift handed down openly by the Emperor, the Northern Territory looks as though it’s spurned the Imperial favor.
But.
‘Don’t worry about it, Grand Duke.’
I picked up a single Lumen stem and spun it lazily between my fingertips, grinning.
‘I’ll turn that worthless land into a goldmine for you.’
There’s something I always say, like a habit.
Potent, rare medicinal herbs and deadly poisonous plants unknown to the world grow in barren, dangerous places where human feet haven’t trodden for ages.
What others call cursed land can sometimes be an untouched treasure vault for an herbalist.
‘Who knows? That mountain range might be teeming with bizarre poisonous herbs never discovered in all of history.’
Heh-heh, huh-huh, hm-hm♪~
Inside the dark bedroom, not a single lamp lit.
I gathered up the Lumen scattered across the table with swift scrapes, humming the tune that spilled out.
Then I carefully packed it all into the storage box I’d brought from the Grand Duke’s residence.
Somehow, I felt like sleep would come easily tonight.

***

At the same moment.
After finishing his business at the medicinal herb shop, Varcan had been silent for a long while as the carriage carried them away.
Beneath the carriage’s faint lamplight, the pallid face of his aide Roan, seated across from him, remained ashen.
Roan was in the process of detoxification, and kept wiping away the cold sweat streaming down his face.
After taking a deep breath, Roan spoke with firm resolve.
“We must find her, Your Grace.”
“…….”
Varcan’s gaze, which had been lost in thought, turned toward Roan.
Roan continued, his face etched with desperation.
“An antidote to Osnis Poison—something that doesn’t exist anywhere in the entire Empire…… We absolutely cannot let such a person slip through our grasp.”
At those words, Varcan sank his massive frame deep into the carriage seat’s backrest, his eyes following the nocturnal landscape of the Capital rushing past the window.
“That’s true. But first, we need to focus on restoring your health. You can’t present yourself before the Imperial relatives looking like a corpse.”
Roan fell silent for a moment. His expression suggested he wanted to argue, but he seemed to notice that his fingertips still trembled slightly.
“……Yes, Your Grace. My apologies.”
Roan lowered his head and steadied his breathing.
Varcan’s tone was dry, but in truth, Varcan shared Roan’s conviction.
No—if anything, Varcan himself wanted to find that mysterious herbalist more than Roan did.
Never mind that her knowledge of medicinal and poisonous herbs far surpassed even the Empire’s most celebrated scholars; the most crucial fact was that she had compounded an antidote to Osnis Poison on the spot in mere minutes.
The Osnis—a Magical Beast found only in the Northern Territory.
Highly toxic, swift-moving, capable of dragging a single knight from the battlefield with just a scratch from its claws.
The Grand Duke House’s knights were constantly exposed to Osnis venom.
No matter how well-armed with fine armor and weapons, it was nearly impossible to completely ward off a Magical Beast’s poison.
Yet for all these years, no antidote to Osnis Poison had been developed.
It had been deprioritized by the Empire’s central scholars—blamed on the fact that it was a Magical Beast found only in the North and the astronomical cost of research.
But that realm of the impossible had yielded an antidote.
Suddenly, in a shabby medicinal herb shop in the Capital’s back alleys, from the hands of a woman whose name and face were unknown.
“I didn’t plan to tell you this far, but I’m a genius herbalist. And it turns out I make antidotes incredibly well too. Insane, right? Even I think I’m absolutely insane.”
The image of that woman laughing those words kept circling in his mind.
Varcan’s keen gaze turned once more toward the dark window.
‘Not only did she conceal her face thoroughly, she deliberately altered her voice as well.’
A mere commoner herbalist hiding her identity so meticulously?
‘Did she fear being branded a heretic or hunted as a witch simply for possessing excessive knowledge as a common woman?’
Of course, that could be a valid reason. But Varcan’s instincts were reading a different possibility.
‘There’s another reason entirely—one that must never come to light.’
Finding that woman was going to be far more difficult than hunting down those black-market dealers of Osnis claws.
Then Roan suddenly lifted his head. A strange smile spread across his pale face.
“Your Highness, I have something to report that the shopkeeper told me.”
Varcan’s gaze turned to Roan.
“He said that the moment that woman entered the shop, she asked for a particular medicinal herb.”
“Which one?”
“She called it Lumen.”
“Lumen?”
Varcan tilted his head slightly.
Roan continued.
“Yes, Your Highness. But apparently, the shop’s stock of Lumen was so low that she said she needed a much larger quantity.”
At that, Varcan nodded once.
“Then there’s a good chance she might visit other medicinal herb shops to obtain Lumen.”
“Indeed. But, Your Highness…….”
In that moment, Roan—whose face bore the deep pallor of illness—smiled in a way that seemed somehow sinister as he continued.
“Apparently, a shipment of Lumen is being delivered from the Western Region to the Capital in two days. And the shopkeeper mentioned that Lumen will be arriving at that very shop we visited just now.”
……
“And the shopkeeper informed that woman of this fact.”
As Roan finished speaking, Varcan’s eyebrow rose very slowly as the meaning of those words sank in.
“I see. Well, how convenient that turns out to be.”
“Quite so, Your Highness.”
Roan’s smile deepened.

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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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