The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 56
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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 56.
At this point, I found myself curious about the royal family of Delmar.
Surely they weren’t all like this?
In the original story, Princess Evelina’s madness came from the shock of war — but what if it was actually her rambling siblings that drove her insane?
Such idle thoughts kept surfacing.
Belia chattered away to herself for quite some time, then insisted on joining me for dinner as well.
It would have been fine if that were the end of it, but she decided she wanted to tour my bedroom too.
Varcan headed off to his study.
Even for Varcan, Belia’s talkativeness would have been difficult to bear.
‘P-please don’t go…….’
Watching Varcan’s receding back, I was drawn along toward the bedroom by Belia.
Once we were alone in the room, Belia collapsed onto the bed, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at me.
“My goodness. You’ve done quite well for yourself?”
At that, I let out a stifled laugh.
“Well, I wouldn’t call it success…….”
Can the word “success” really come so easily to a sister dragged away as a hostage?
I found myself thinking of the real Evelina, who had died in the forest, and the thought troubled me.
That was when Belia giggled.
“I expected you’d be treated poorly as a hostage from an enemy nation.”
What? Did I mishear her just now?
“What did you say?”
When I asked her to repeat herself, Belia moved her lips with an oddly light expression.
“Well, isn’t it? Who here would love you?”
…….
Her blue eyes grew desolate and cold.
“Unless they wanted to tear you to pieces.”
I was momentarily at a loss for words.
Was that her true nature?
Each word from her lips—delivered with such a gentle expression as she spoke of her own sister—was cruelly precise.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Sister.”
“What.”
“Isn’t my mind unstable?”
“It is.”
“Is this perhaps… hereditary?”
“……What?”
Belia looked at me as if I’d said something ridiculous.
I stared at her with wide eyes and pressed on.
“Looking at you, it occurred to me. You seem just as mad as I am.”
…….
In that instant, the faint smile lingering on Belia’s face dissolved.
It was hard to believe this was the same woman who had been chirping away like a bird just moments before.
The very air in the bedroom rapidly grew heavy.
After a pause, Belia opened her mouth quietly.
“Since we’re on the subject, let me ask you something.”
“What?”
Rising from the bed, Belia approached slowly and spoke softly.
“Did you decide to stop pretending to be a mad princess?”
…….
In that moment, my spine went cold.
Before I could ask what she meant, Belia reached her hand toward the ceiling.
Whoosh—.
From her fingertips, a red energy poured forth like blood, shimmering in the air.
The crimson thread stretched out in an instant, enveloping the ceiling and walls, the door frame and windows.
The entire bedroom was trapped within a red barrier.
‘What… what is this?’
A barrier.
I looked around in confusion, and Belia laughed as though it were the most amusing thing.
“Don’t be so startled.”
Belia swept her hair back and continued.
“I’m simply preventing others from hearing our conversation.”
…….
In that instant, I was certain.
‘This woman is not Princess Belia.’
I instinctively touched the paper I’d tucked inside my glove.
“You’re not Princess Belia, are you.”
Then the thing masquerading as Belia pulled one corner of her mouth into a diagonal smirk.
“You? A lowborn herb gatherer, speaking to me with such insolence?”
The woman’s features still belonged to Delmar’s Princess Belia, but the aura she radiated was entirely different.
I pressed further.
“Who are you?”
“Hah, still calling me ‘you’? Do you have a death wish?”
“Tell me who you really are.”
…….
“Wait. Did the Guild send you?!”
The false Belia let out a forced laugh.
“Our fake princess is quite perceptive, isn’t she.”
“Only those audacious fools would attempt something so brazen.”
“Fools, is it. I suppose when you’ve spent your life rolling around in the mountains gathering herbs, you lack any sense of decorum.”
“Likewise.”
“……didn’t I tell you not to call me that.”
The fake Belia’s brow creased irritably.
Her aggression intensified, but after facing Varcan daily, this was barely a scratch.
I pressed forward relentlessly with my questions.
“Why did the Guild suddenly send something like you?”
…….
“Was it the Guild’s orders, or just your own reckless decision?”
I gestured toward the red Barrier that enveloped the room.
“With abilities like that, you’re a mage? Do all the other Guild members possess such powers too?”
…….
But there was no answer.
Yet even that silence was an answer—information.
I studied the fake Belia slowly, from head to foot.
A Substitute daring to pose as Belia and walk into the Grand Duke’s residence.
That meant she was confident she wouldn’t be discovered.
Wait. A chill suddenly ran down my spine.
“You……did you kill the real Princess Belia to take her place?!”
Just as the Guild had killed Princess Evelina and sent a fake in her stead?!
The fake Belia’s jaw clenched.
Something had angered her deeply.
As time passed, the fake Belia’s eyes grew wilder.
“A lowborn wretch sitting in a station far above your station—do you actually think you’ve become a princess?”
Crunch-crunch. The sound of grinding teeth rang out sharply.
‘I can’t even fathom how furious she is.’
I stepped back as if frightened, and the fake Belia slashed through the air with her fingertips.
Red energy surged violently into her hand.
“You usurped someone else’s position and failed to carry out the Master’s orders properly. I shall punish the fake in the Master’s stead…….”
Someone else’s position?
I blinked.
‘Oh—is she talking about the fake princess position?’
Then, suddenly, I remembered what the Guild member had said.
Before I appeared, there was already a Substitute who had finished long training and was waiting.
That Substitute…….
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
…….
“Yes. I remember hearing there was supposed to be a Substitute for Princess Evelina. ……that was you, wasn’t it?! That’s it, isn’t it?!”
That was the moment.
“I told you not to call me that!!!!!”
The fake Belia, her thread of reason completely severed, hurled her fury at me and lunged like a beast.
In that critical instant, she rushed forward along a trajectory that seemed to tear through my vision.
Whoosh—!
I flung the Sleep Powder I’d been clutching, hurling it straight at the fake Belia’s face.
White powder cascaded over her features, falling like snow.
“Ugh?!”
The fake Belia flailed her arms and stumbled backward.
“What is—”
She wanted to ask what this was.
But it was too late.
Thud—!
The fake Belia crumpled to the ground.
I clenched my fist tight.
“Yes! That’s it!”
My chest felt completely vindicated.
“This is how they’re supposed to go down!”
My special Sleep Powder had no flaws whatsoever.
Watching Varcan resist and resist, I’d spent weeks doubting the formula, drowning in self-doubt.
But now.
Using it on an ordinary person, I finally understood.
My creation was flawless.
‘That’s right—it was him who was the problem, not the powder.’
I looked down at the fake sprawled on the ground.
“But why was that so easy?”
By her words and mannerisms, by the strange abilities she wielded, she looked like a Guild operative trained for years.
‘If even a Guild member like that couldn’t mount a proper defense and just collapsed, these Guild bastards aren’t worth much, are they?’
Caught up in pointless satisfaction, I was silently laughing until I suddenly came to my senses.
“Oh, right. This is no time for that.”
I crouched down quickly and searched the fake’s body.
As expected.
There was a bracelet on her wrist.
A magical stone set in its center glowed faintly.
It looked different from the magical artifact I’d bought from Ivan, but the structure was similar enough.
‘If I press this…’
I pressed the magical stone firmly.
Fzzzzzt.
Belia’s face wavered and dissolved.
Beneath it lay a woman with short, chestnut-brown hair.
She’d seemed older than me because she’d reacted so sensitively to being called “you,” but now she looked roughly my age.
“Wow.”
It really worked.
I unbuckled the bracelet and turned it over, examining it from every angle.
The craftsmanship and overall appearance differed from the bracelet I’d purchased from Ivan, the Tower Master, but the quality and effect of the magical stone seemed comparable.
‘Ivan Helavin.’
Anger boiled up inside me.
‘This Tower Master bastard…’
He’d gone on and on about how there was only one mage like him in the world.
How only he could craft something this high-quality—pure lies!
There’s another one right here, another!
‘Did you make this too?! Did you?!’
As anger at Ivan seethed through me, my gaze suddenly fell on the short-haired Guild operative sprawled on the ground.
A strange thought struck me.
But why now?
The Guild, which had always just watched and done nothing even when I failed to complete their orders—
Why now, of all times?
And on someone like this?
An incompetent, emotional substitute who charges in at the single word “you”?
‘At this level…’
I stared down at the fallen woman.
‘Did they just send me off to die?’
Or was this also one of their elaborate schemes, another piece of bait in some larger trap?
‘Something else is going on here…’
That was when it happened.
Bang—!
A tremendous crash shattered against my eardrums.
The blood-red Barrier that the short-haired Guild member had woven around the bedroom thrashed violently, as though an earthquake had struck.
And then.
Crack—!
The soundproof Barrier split apart in all directions and shattered into fragments, like an enormous glass window exploding.
“Your Highness!”
Bursting through the falling crimson shards, Varcan launched himself into the chamber.
A chilling murderous intent gleamed in the man’s piercing eyes as they swept across me.
“Ah, you’ve arrived?”
At my perfectly calm greeting, Varcan’s stern brow twitched for an instant.
He looked from me, standing unharmed, to the short-haired woman sprawled across the carpet, then back again.
Armed knights poured into the bedroom behind him.
Having grasped the situation, Varcan issued an order in an icy voice.
“Take her to the dungeons. She requires interrogation.”
“Yes, Your Highness!”
The knights approached the unconscious Impostor.
Then, materializing silently between them, the aide Roan seized the Impostor’s jaw with a brutal grip.
Without hesitation, he pushed his fingers into her mouth and twisted slightly at the tips.
Crack—!
A sickening sound scraped through the chamber.
A bloody molar extracted itself cleanly from Roan’s fingertips.
I felt my shoulders flinch.
Roan wiped the extracted tooth on a handkerchief with meticulous care, then turned to us both with a smile so kind and gentle it was impossible to believe he’d just pulled out someone’s tooth.
“A lethal poison, for suicide.”
He explained matter-of-factly.
“Removing it allows for more prolonged interrogation.”
“…….”
Lethal poison?
My eyes snapped wide open in an instant.
I quickly reached out my hand.
“Ah, if you’d give that to me—”
“Take her.”
“Yes.”
Varcan cut off my words with a command.
The knights swiftly carried Roan and the Impostor away.
‘Tch.’
What a waste.
I stood there with an empty hand suspended awkwardly in the air, my tongue tracing my lips regretfully.
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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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