The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 50

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 50.

***

Before my newly assigned bedroom.
I stood frozen in the open doorway, unable to bring myself to step inside.
Celine watched me with a worried expression and asked gently.
“Your Highness, are you truly all right?”
Ena, standing beside her, regarded me in silence, clutching my packed bags against her chest.
Looking at both their faces, it was as though I were being exiled to some distant land for a terrible crime.
‘No. I can’t let my feelings dictate my expression.’
My mood alone, my face alone, could shape the feelings of those around me.
I lifted my chin deliberately.
“It’s fine, Celine.”
I spoke with measured pride, surveying the interior of my new bedroom.
“The hero of a story never grows without hardship and adversity, after all. I am the protagonist of my own life, and this room is simply a trial meant to forge me.”
“I’m sorry?”
Celine looked at me as though I were spouting nonsense, but I pressed on, unbothered.
“So, embrace it.”

“Besides, the room is larger than before, isn’t it?”

I forced my lips into a smile and stepped into the new bedroom.
In truth, the newly assigned room was spacious.
The anteroom extending from the door to the sleeping chamber was appointed with furniture that gleamed expensively at first glance.
My previous bedroom had not been lacking for a princess, but this one was far more ostentatiously luxurious.
A weighty silver candelabra, dark blue velvet curtains, and the crest of Escar carved above the fireplace lent the bedroom a captivating allure.
As I traced my fingertips admiringly over the furniture in the anteroom, Celine spoke hesitantly.
“This room has been used by the Grand Duchess for generations, Your Highness.”
“Ah…”
Now it made sense.
Why it was situated directly beside the Duke’s own chambers, why the furniture felt subtly heavier and more refined — I understood it all now.
As Celine arranged my belongings, she added lightly.
“Well, it won’t be long before you marry the Grand Duke anyway! There’s nothing odd about using it ahead of time, before you truly become the Grand Duchess!”
She spoke in a deliberately cheerful tone, as though offering comfort.
I turned my head slowly to regard the door that connected directly to Balkan’s bedroom.
‘Nothing odd about it.’
With only one wall separating us, I would have to share a life with Balkan — this was surely the strangest situation in my entire existence, Celine.
This bedroom was nothing but the Grand Duchess’s suite in name; in truth, it was the most luxurious confinement cell, equipped with the Empire’s keenest observer attached to it.
‘And he even said directly that his ears are sharp.’
Every footstep, every breath — I would have to monitor myself constantly from now on.
I glared at the door connecting the two bedrooms.
‘What, didn’t we grow closer after going through life and death together?!’
Was I the only one who felt that camaraderie, that comradeship? Was I alone in that feeling?

***

That night.
After Celine and Ena had finished organizing my things and returned to the servants’ quarters, when the Grand Duke’s Residence lay deep in darkness and silence at a late hour,
I carefully opened my bedroom door.
I rolled only my eyes through the crack, surveying the hallway beyond.
Fortunately, the knights who had guarded the corridor since my move to the adjacent bedroom were gone.
Well, there could be no protection more formidable than Balkan himself.
In any case.
‘Perfect timing.’
I stifled a laugh of triumph and slipped smoothly into the shadows of the corridor like a whisper.
Honestly, I hadn’t wanted to do this on my first night in the new room.
But finding the note Glen had hidden beneath the dinner plate made it impossible to remain quietly in place.
“Complete.”
The Magical Artifact was finished.
‘I can’t just lie here.’
How could I possibly stay in bed and fall asleep when I’d been waiting so desperately for this news?
As if heaven itself conspired in my favor, Balkan had already slipped out of the Grand Duke’s Residence well before dinner time.
‘He’s probably swamped with the Lacrion Mountain Range project.’
To execute the development plan for the Lacrion Mountain Range, Balkan couldn’t simply sit idle.
Days like this—they called them heaven’s gift of opportunity.
I slipped through the corridor without hesitation and made my way to the backyard connected to the kitchen.
Before an old wooden door shrouded in heavy darkness.
The reinforced door, weighty with iron bands, was Glen’s private entrance—the one he used whenever he traveled to and from the Domain for supplies.
“You’ve arrived.”
Glen emerged quietly from the shadows where he’d been waiting.
“In exactly three hours, I’ll be here to collect you.”
“I’m counting on you, Glen.”
I gave a slight nod and quickly tucked myself into the cargo bed of the supply cart he’d prepared.
Rattle, rattle.
As the cart rumbled down the dark mountain path toward the Domain’s bustling quarter, I found myself reconsidering just how useful a collaborator this man Glen really was.
‘Sharp instincts, and genuinely helpful in so many ways.’
When I’d casually mentioned the possibility of camping in the Lacrion Mountain Range, it was Glen who’d thought ahead and procured extra Helbain Sedative without being asked.
A trusted ally bound by circumstance, you might say.
Our first meeting had been rough, but there was nothing inherently malicious or twisted about the man himself.
‘If we’re counting bad first meetings, the Grand Duke and I would top that list.’
As I chuckled at the memory of that dreadful first encounter, the cart came to a gentle stop in a quiet alley of the busy quarter.
The shabby inn’s back alley—the very place I’d first come to commission the Magical Artifact.
I climbed down from the cart and followed a guide waiting at the inn’s back entrance up a narrow, creaking wooden staircase to the second floor.
Through a maze-like corridor to a room tucked into the far corner of the second floor.
The same room as before.
I took a light breath and turned the door handle.
Creak.
The heavy wooden door opened, and the dimly lit interior of the shabby room came into view.
‘What…?’
I stopped dead in my tracks as I entered.
I’d naturally expected to meet the mage’s subordinate first, but instead, a man I’d never seen before was sitting there.
He was unmistakably unfamiliar, and yet somehow not a stranger at all.
‘Ah…!’
Then something suddenly flashed in my mind.
Hair the color of silver, flowing down to his waist; violet eyes that gleamed mysteriously even under the dim lighting.
A slow, languid gaze like that of a sated predator, and an indulgent curve to his lips.
And.
‘That tear mole beneath his right eye—etched so distinctly!’
I recognized him instantly, and a sharp breath caught in my throat.
‘That man… that, that person….’
Could it be… Ibian Helbain?!
My jaw trembled.
The man who had just materialized before me was someone any reader of the original work could never forget.
Beyond the Grand Duke, he was the one man in the empire who could rival the Crown Prince in power—the apex of continental mages.
The Tower Master, Ibian Helbain.
And also another secondary male lead in this very story.
I desperately suppressed the scream rising to my throat.
If Balkan Escar, the Grand Duke, had been the secondary lead devoted to heartfelt, pure love for the heroine—
‘Then this Tower Master Ibian was the madman who abducted the heroine and tried to die with her!’
What on earth was this lunatic doing in the North?
Mages as a breed didn’t typically settle anywhere, wandering as they pleased.
But shouldn’t the Tower Master be locked away in his Mage Tower?
‘Glen… what exactly have you introduced me to?’
I was going to have words with him when I got back.
As I stared at him with an expression of utter disbelief—
The madman smiled, his eyes narrowing smoothly, and spoke.
“Sit down, customer. Why do you look so shocked? You came to buy a Magical Artifact, didn’t you?”
Damn it…….
‘I can’t just turn around and leave now, not after walking in like this.’
I quickly steadied my gaze and walked toward the chair, offering a thin smile.
“Yes, I came to buy a Magical Artifact. The mage who commissioned it seemed so young that I thought I’d walked into the wrong room.”
At that, the madman laughed.
“No, you found the right place. Come on, sit. I don’t like having to look up.”
At his words, I drew in a sharp breath.
“……Ah, oh, I see? I didn’t know. You should’ve said so earlier. I would’ve sat down the moment I came in!”
Ha, haha……. I laughed awkwardly and quickly took my seat.
Of course.
A Tower Master with such a foul temperament and ruthless nature dislikes being looked down upon.
If I pushed back out of stubbornness, he might just slit my ankles to level our eyes.
Then, the madman asked a question.
“By the way, how do you know Glen?”
At that question, I hesitated for a moment before answering.
“That……, do I have to answer?”
…….
In an instant, Ibian’s brow twitched, the smile playing at his lips dissolved, and those violet eyes that had seemed so mysterious grew dangerously cold.
A chill like the bite of a winter wind swept across my back. I flinched, hunched my shoulders, and quickly spoke up.
“Well, you see, it’s all rather tangled up. If I started explaining, it would take far too long to go into here. It’d be better if you just asked Glen directly.”
At my obliging answer, Ibian’s expression softened again.
“That old man doesn’t usually take on tedious requests like this.”
Ah, how curious……. He really does have a lot of questions…….
While keeping such thoughts hidden, I answered again with a gentle smile.
“Wouldn’t that mean Glen and I are close? Hahaha.”
“Hmm.”
Ibian regarded me with a look of intrigue.
Then he rested his elbows on the table, propped his chin on his hands, and slowly looked me up and down.
That gaze felt like a butcher’s eye—the kind that looks at pigs herded to the slaughterhouse and wonders whose throat to cut today—and it sent a chill down my spine.
“You don’t have Mana, you don’t have an Aura. How did you ever get tangled up with that old man?”
“Hahaha……. Right? Why would Glen do that? I don’t know either, so maybe it’s best if you just ask Glen directly—.”
“He doesn’t usually send people to me unless there’s a good reason.”
“Well, like I said before, it’s because Glen and I are close—.”
“That old man doesn’t make friends.”
…….
Sigh. This bastard isn’t interested in a simple transaction, is he…….
I swallowed a sigh and asked.
“We’re not going to do business?”
…….
Then, after a moment of silence, Ibian slowly straightened in his seat.
“Now, what to do about this?”
Then he smiled wickedly, narrowing his eyes into crescents, and continued.
“I don’t do business with people who hide their faces.”
“……What?”
Ibian raised one long finger to his own face and made a gesture of pulling something down, then spoke.
“So, take. Off. That. Mask. Dear. Guest.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————