The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 64

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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 64.

“Imperial Investigation Bureau examiner, Aizen Daelth.”
The man produced a silver-gleaming badge from the Imperial Investigation Bureau, holding it up for me to see.
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry.
It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d stumbled upon a starving bear in the forest—hair standing on end, nerves screaming danger.
Ash-gray hair, murky green eyes, and a burn scar the size of a palm on his left cheek, as if flames had licked it raw and left their mark.
Add to that a physique so broad and imposing it looked ready to burst through his uniform.
‘Good grief, he’s terrifying.’
If he hadn’t introduced himself as an examiner, I’d have believed he was a back-alley contract killer without question.
So this is the caliber required to turn the Imperial Palace inside out……
My palms began to sweat.
I quickly composed my expression and bowed my head respectfully.
“I’m very pleased to meet you. I am…….”
I hesitated for a moment, then smiled brightly and continued.
“My name is Ive.”
“Ive?”
“Yes!”
“Your family name?”
“I don’t have one.”
“A commoner, then.”
“That’s right!”
“…….”
I’d tried to answer with the crisp confidence of a diligent new recruit, but somehow Aizen’s already menacing expression darkened further.
With both hands planted on his waist, he exhaled a deep sigh that seemed to shake the very floor.
“……Assigning a green recruit to such a critical case.”
He aired his grievances with the higher-ups without the slightest filter, making no attempt to hide his contempt for the organization.
After studying the marble floor of the corridor in silence for a while, Aizen turned his gaze back to me.
Those heavy green eyes raked over me from head to toe.
It was the kind of cold, appraising look one might give an insect.
He leaned his massive frame forward, bringing his scarred face close to mine.
“If you got into the Investigation Bureau not through skill but through someone’s dirty breath of favoritism, you’d do well to prepare yourself.”
“…….”
“I despise your kind intensely.”
The warning dripped with lethal intent.
Ah……. It seemed I’d managed to land myself in a serious misunderstanding.
‘……Well, I suppose that’s how it would look to someone who doesn’t know the full story.’
A new recruit planted here by the Emperor himself.
And one who’d appeared out of nowhere in the midst of a critical case—the attempted poisoning of the Princess.
There was no point protesting the accusation of nepotism.
While I understood Aizen’s misunderstanding, I found myself swallowing nervously against the sheer menace radiating from him.
A Grand Duke’s Consort hiding her identity, and an investigator with a brutal appearance who despised nepotism with a passion.
‘……This won’t be easy.’
I managed an awkward smile while barely concealing the cold sweat trickling down my cheek.
“I’ll keep that in mind!”
“Quick responses, at least.”
“It seemed like the least I could manage!”
Aizen’s brow twitched slightly.
Had I said something wrong?
Snap—I clamped my mouth shut at once.
Aizen studied me a moment longer, then turned away.
“Follow me.”
“Yes!”
His pace was brisk.
He moved less like an examiner and more like a knight hardened by war.
The servants and attendants of the Princess’s Palace pressed themselves against the walls the instant they caught sight of him.
Their fear was unmistakable.
Aizen came to a halt before the Antechamber of the Princess’s Palace.
“I’ll examine the antechamber. You check the bedroom.”
“……Me, sir?”
“It’s an order from above. ……To see just how skilled you really are.”
He fixed me with a fierce gaze as he spoke.
“I’ll be watching.”
“Y-yes, of course!”
I spun around at once and rushed toward Eleanor’s bedroom.
A heavy silence hung within the chamber.
Pale-faced servants and a single physician from the Imperial Medical Bureau stood waiting.
Then a young man who appeared to be a physician shuffled toward me.
“I’m Dillan, an apprentice physician dispatched from the Imperial Medical Bureau. I’ve been ordered to assist with the preparation of an Antidote.”
He was a lean man.
Tousled brown hair, deep hollows beneath his eyes, and a physician’s coat that looked as though he’d thrown it on without thinking.
He seemed less like an Imperial Palace physician and more like someone dragged straight out of a laboratory after four nights without sleep.
‘An apprentice?’
The Princess herself had been poisoned, and they’re assigning me an apprentice?
‘Does the Emperor truly not care whether Eleanor lives or dies……?’
Or perhaps he’d deliberately attached someone easy to blame alongside me if I failed.
Unless……
‘Could he be some kind of hidden master?’
While I was turning over the Emperor’s intentions, Dillan fixed me with tired eyes and spoke.
“So you’re well-versed in Medicinal Herbs and poisonous plants, I hear.”
“Yes.”
Dillan made a small clicking sound with his tongue.
“Even the physicians of the Medical Bureau—supposedly the best and brightest—can’t find it, yet a greenhorn from the Investigation Bureau somehow can……”
It sounded like muttering, but his voice was loud enough to hear.
Deliberately loud.
Dillan swept his bangs back roughly.
“Just don’t get in the way.”
“……”
“Everyone’s on edge right now.”
Aizen was. This apprentice physician Dillan was too.
Everyone in the Imperial Palace seemed to have their spines raised like a hedgehog.
But instead of taking offense, I nodded calmly.
“I’ll do my best. I want Princess Eleanor to wake safely too.”
Very desperately, in fact.
Perhaps he sensed the sincerity in my steady gaze. Dillan cleared his throat awkwardly, then had the servants step aside so I could examine Eleanor.
“I can’t give you much time. Look her over quickly.”
“Yes.”
I answered lightly and moved quickly toward the bed.
Eleanor lay sleeping as though dead.
I looked down at her, my eyes narrowing slightly.
‘Just yesterday we were laughing and talking together……’
Not knowing something like this would happen……
I began examining her carefully.
Her forehead burned hot as a coal. Yet her fingertips and toes were ice-cold.
‘Her lips have taken on a purplish hue.’
And when I tilted her head slightly, the veins between the nape of her neck and behind her ears stood out in stark blue.
‘This is……’
I closed my eyes slowly.
Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.
I concentrated all my focus on the tip of my nose and drew the room’s air in deeply, then exhaled, repeating the motion.
Multiple scents tangled together in the air, and drifting among them was a single, faint, subtly sweet fragrance that caught in the mesh of my sense of smell.
‘……The smell released when Nocterbell burns.’
My eyes flew open and I glanced around urgently.
One on the nightstand beside the bed. One on the desk stacked with papers. And another by the table in the antechamber.
Half-burned, premium Scented Candles—which the Imperial physicians had overlooked—came into sharp focus.
I hurried over, picked up one of the candles, and brought it to my nose.
Sure enough, the scent of Nocterbell was mingled through it.
‘That’s it……the Scented Candles were the culprit!’
And the scented candles bore a gold-foil label with the Rocheno Merchant Company’s name.
‘The Rocheno Merchant Company?’
It was a merchant house I’d never encountered in the original work.
In truth, there was no way to memorize every merchant company name that appeared in the source material.
‘Still, if I investigate this company, the connections should come to light.’
Perhaps it would trace back to Marquis Bientra, who was the true culprit in the original story.
I hurried to the bedroom door and threw it wide open to air out the room.
A harsh wind rushed in. At once, the apprentice physician Dillan startled and came running.
“Why are you opening the window? I told you sudden actions are out of the question!”
I stared straight at Dillan as the wind poured over me.
“The tea leaves that the Princess and the Grand Duke’s Consort drank together were Mingred.”
At my abrupt response, Dillan’s brow furrowed.
“I know that! We examined the teacups first thing! But what does that have to do with anything? No toxins whatsoever were found in the Mingred tea!”
I thrust the scented candle toward his eyes.
“The problem is this.”
“A scented candle?”
“It carries the scent of Nocterbell. And that Nocterbell fragrance is saturating the Princess’s bedroom.”
Dillan objected as if dumbfounded.
“That’s just a common nerve-settling medicinal herb used by commoners for insomnia! Of course, I don’t know why such cheap Nocterbell would be mixed into these candles, but what does that have to do with poisoning…….”
“You’re right. On its own, it’s an ordinary sedative.”
I leaned slowly against the window frame.
“But what happens when it meets Mingred?”
“……!”
In that moment, Dillan’s pupils began to quake as if an earthquake had struck.
His lips trembled.
“Mingred contains a minute trace of a component called Roxi. That component had sleep-inducing properties, but…….”
His expression grew grave.
“The moment that Roxi component combines with Nocterbell absorbed through the respiratory system.”
Dillan sucked in a sharp breath.
“……it transforms into a lethal nerve-paralysis poison within the body?”
I nodded lightly.
Nocterbell is cheap medicinal herb that no member of the Imperial House or nobility would deign to touch.
Who would ever imagine that the finest scented candles used by a princess could contain even a trace of such inferior commoner’s remedy?
The true culprit had exploited that prejudice perfectly.
Dillan raked his fingers roughly through his hair.
“Why……why didn’t I think of this?!”
Dillan tore at his hair before suddenly looking at me with disbelieving eyes.
“But how did you…… know this, Investigator?”
“By smell. There was lingering Nocterbell scent remaining in the room.”
“……You identified Nocterbell by scent alone?”
I shrugged and answered flatly.
“Yes, doesn’t everyone do that?”
“…….”
Dillan’s mouth fell open. The arrogance with which he’d looked down on me had long since crumbled to dust.
‘Now I’ve figured out what poison Eleanor was exposed to.’
All that remained was to brew the Antidote using every bit of knowledge I possessed.
I gathered up the three scented candles resting on the side table.
I would turn over the official evidence to Aizen.
But there was no guarantee that evidence wouldn’t vanish within the Imperial Palace.
I needed to leave at least one piece with Escar’s faction.
One I slipped discreetly into my sleeve pocket, then abruptly thrust the remaining two into Dillan’s arms.
“Would you deliver these to Chief Investigator Aizen in the Antechamber?”
“……Yes? Me, m-myself?”
“Yes.”
Dillan’s face drained of color at once. He hesitated, glancing nervously past the open Antechamber door.
“Ah, I……well, that person is, how should I put it……somewhat……uncomfortable around.”
I smiled with the most serene expression in the world and spoke firmly.
“Do. It. Now.”
“…….”
The truth was.
I found it uncomfortable too.

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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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