The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 52

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

Episode 52.

***

Click.
Hidden deep in the alley, I pressed the blue Magic Stone at the center of my bracelet.
A brief vibration traced across my skin.
‘Did it work?’
I carefully pulled back my hood and held my face up to the dark glass window of a shuttered shop to see my reflection.
‘It’s so dark I can’t tell if the colors have changed.’
But it was unmistakable—my platinum hair and clear blue eyes had shifted to much darker shades.
‘My nose, my eyes, even my jawline looks subtly different.’
Remarkable, really.
No wonder people go on about Magical Devices the way they do.
‘The craftsmanship is impressive, at least.’
The problem is it has nothing else to recommend it.
I recalled Evan’s contrived smile and promptly erased it from my mind.
Usually, the best thing after seeing Evan was to soothe my startled nerves by breathing in the scent of Medicinal Herbs, but today there was no time for that.
‘Now that I’m out, I need to go there first.’
Having a Magical Device doesn’t mean I can slip in and out of House of Escar whenever I please.
Today, by good fortune, Varcan had vacated the estate, so I’d managed to leave without much difficulty.
But now that I’d been moved to the bedroom next to Varcan’s, there was no telling when such an opportunity would come again.
‘I’ll have to put off the herb shop for now.’
A compounding room would be built soon enough, and if I spoke carefully, I could have Varcan procure whatever medicinal herbs I needed.
For now, there was something more pressing to attend to.
With my appearance changed, I pulled my hood low and slipped back between the alley walls.
After walking only a short distance, I spotted a dilapidated building nestled at the mouth of a narrow back alley.
Pinoelle Inn.
The weathered wooden sign, caught by the north wind, creaked and groaned with an eerie, discordant sound as it swung.
I looked up at the sign for a moment, then stepped into the inn without hesitation.
Ting—. The door chimed as it opened, releasing a rush of stale, musty air thick with the smell of damp wood.
The innkeeper behind the counter lifted his head slowly.
“Welcome.”
“A room, please.”
“Will you be alone?”
“Yes. Do you serve meals?”
“At this hour?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s not impossible, but…”
“Then I’ll have the veal stew. No carrots, and plenty of pepper.”
“…”
In that instant, the faint warmth in the innkeeper’s eyes vanished entirely.
He scrutinized my face and clothing with a sharp, cold gaze, then quickly smoothed his expression as though nothing had happened.
A thin smile crossed his lips, and he produced a brass key from his pocket, holding it out to me.
“Second floor, right-hand corridor, second room from the end. We’ll bring your meal directly to your room.”
“Thank you.”
I took the key and climbed to my room on the second floor.
Not even ten minutes after I’d stepped inside.
Knock, knock—.
A soft knocking and a measured voice drifted through the door.
“Your veal stew has arrived.”
“Come in.”
The door opened immediately.
The person who entered was not the innkeeper from the first floor.
A neat, modest brown dress, hair streaked with grey, a gentle smile.
Yet the gaze she fixed on me was distinctly piercing.
The woman set the steaming bowl of stew on the table, then pulled out the chair across from me and sat down with practiced ease.
She was smiling, but the atmosphere she radiated was ice-cold.
“It’s my first time hearing such a young lady speak the contact passphrase. ……What brings you to this place at such an hour?”
Her tone was deliberately cordial, but her gaze cut through me with sharp precision.
“What else would someone visit an information guild for?”
At my words, her eyes narrowed slightly.
“Do you have information to buy or sell?”
She raked over my worn cloak and empty hands with a glance.
“You don’t look like someone who can pay much.”
I merely smiled at the blatant mockery.
“By that logic, you don’t look like a member of an information guild either.”
……
“So let’s stop judging people by appearances, shall we? I came after hearing that the Vincenta Guild is among the empire’s finest information organizations, and I’d hate to regret that decision.”
……
The moment I mentioned the Vincenta Guild, her pupils trembled ever so faintly at my pointed retort.
Exactly as I’d suspected.
This inn, which looked like it only peddled cheap beer to third-rate mercenaries, was actually one of the hideouts for the Vincenta Guild—a vast information organization operating throughout the empire.
Each region had a branch, and the woman before me was likely the branch director of the northern division.
In the original work, there was an episode where the heroine Florian visited the Duchy of Escar.
At that time, she had secretly come to this inn to commission a task, using the contact passphrase.
“Yes. What brings our noble priestess to such a shabby inn?”
“I… I want to have a meal!”
“Oh my, you’re hungry. What shall I prepare?”
“A stew! Veal stew! Er… hold the carrots, but plenty of pepper?”
Thanks to that scene, where the original heroine had fumbled through the passphrase with such nervousness, I was able to use the contact passphrase as well.
The woman across from me smiled faintly.
“Very well. I made a mistake judging you by appearance alone. I apologize sincerely. You may call me Veronica here. I lead the Vincenta northern branch. Now then, what is the nature of your request?”
So she was indeed the branch director.
I nodded in acceptance of her apology before speaking.
“I’m looking for a person. A court physician who disappeared suddenly from the Imperial Palace a year ago. Her name is Selty Rhodesis. If she’s still alive, she’s almost certainly using an alias instead of her real name. And……”
I paused. I hesitated for a moment over whether to add this detail, then decided I had no choice but to continue.
“She was also the nursemaid of the First Princess, Eleanor. Can you find her?”
……
As I finished speaking, silence fell over the room.
Selty Rhodesis.
The nursemaid Eleanor had relied on most in her childhood.
After the princess came of age, Selty had left Eleanor’s side but remained as a court physician. Yet a year ago, she vanished abruptly from the Imperial Palace.
In the original story, Eleanor had assumed her dead.
She believed her beloved nursemaid had been quietly assassinated in the power struggles of the palace, and she grieved with that conviction.
But she was wrong.
‘Selty Rhodesis will come back alive.’
The problem was that she returned far too late.
On the day when word reached the continent that Eleanor, leaving the empire for her royal marriage, had met her death upon the sea.
Selty, consumed by rage and thirst for vengeance, awakened as a practitioner of Black Magic and turned both the Imperial Palace and the Capital upside down.
She burned the palace and spread plague across the Capital using Black Magic.
Countless citizens of the empire perished in that catastrophe.
Even the young princes and princesses in the palace lost their lives.
When Selty was finally captured, she could not endure the brutal torture and eventually perished.
‘The problem is that when that woman dies, the sparks fall on House of Escar.’
For whatever reason, before dying, Selty confessed that some of the Black Mages were hiding in the Duchy of Escar, gathering their strength.
With those words alone, the Imperial House and the Temple gained their pretext to crush the Duchy.
Investigation teams were dispatched from both the Imperial House and the Temple to look into heresy, and the ones leading that investigation were Crown Prince Cain and the Holy Maiden Florian.
The already financially strained House of Escar had all its subsidies cut off, and even a portion of the profits from hunting magical beasts was forcibly seized by the Imperial House.
‘So this time, I have to prevent that from happening.’
If that unfolds as it did in the original, not only will I lose the magic stone mine I’ve just found, but the Lacrion Mountain Range—now free of the poison mist—will be seized as well.
‘If Eleanor doesn’t die, Selty won’t rage and awaken to Black Magic.’
For that to happen, Selty must never have reached for Black Magic in the first place……
At that moment, the branch director, who had been staring at me intently, asked a question.
“Finding a person is certainly possible, but as you know, tracing someone connected to the Imperial House is far from easy. Given the danger involved, the price is steep. Will that be acceptable?”
“Of course it will.”
I nodded with confidence, not blinking an eye.
But truthfully, it wasn’t acceptable at all.
I’d already spent my gold coins buying medicinal herbs at the apothecary, and the last of my money had vanished entirely when I purchased a magical device.
Yet I had my reasons for remaining so confident.
I set down a small, flat leather pouch beside the plate of veal stew with deliberate casualness.
“I’d like to settle the cost with goods instead of gold coins. Would that be possible?”
The branch manager’s eyes flickered. She picked up the pouch slowly and spoke.
“We do accept payment in goods rather than coin. However, when conducting a barter transaction, the item must possess considerably higher and more assured value than it would if paid for in gold.”
I nodded.
“I don’t think you’ll find it lacking.”
“That’s something I’ll have to verify and—”
The branch manager’s words trailed off as she looked into the pouch.
The smile vanished from her face.
“……Lindrio?”
“I thought you’d recognize it.”
Lindrio was one of the rare medicinal herbs I’d managed to harvest just before it could be trampled underfoot during that expedition to the Lacrion Mountain Range with Varcan.
Most of the other herbs had been left behind due to time constraints.
When refined and pressed into a pill, it had the effect of stopping the pulse and breath, extinguishing body heat and all presence, making one appear virtually as a corpse.
It was used to shake off pursuers, or to deceive knights and mages with keen senses.
Or to smuggle someone out by disguising them as a corpse.
Because of this, among the underworld of back alleys and guild organizations, it was traded for far more than any amount of gold coins.
In the suffocating silence, the branch manager gripped the mouth of the pouch.
I laughed before she could haggle over the price.
“Don’t try to cheat me. There are plenty of other guilds I can take this to.”
I was using the same threat I’d leveled at Evan once before.
And it worked splendidly.
The branch manager nodded meekly.
“……I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so. Our guild will accept this commission.”
I smiled with satisfaction.
“Excellent. Consider that an advance payment. Once the work is finished cleanly, I’ll give you double.”
The branch manager’s eyes widened to twice their size.
“I’ll contact you as soon as possible. Though…….”
She asked carefully.
“Where should I send the contact?”
“Hmm…….”
I paused to think.
I couldn’t give my own name, nor could I have messages sent directly to the Escar estate.
It would be better to have an intermediary—someone who could receive the contact.
Someone I could trust, someone already wading through this cesspool alongside me.
That was when it struck me.
Yes, of course. That person existed.
“Glen!”
I spoke brightly, beaming.
“Please contact Glen, who works in the kitchens of House of Escar.”

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