The Possession-Spoon Chef Feeds the Empire - Chapter 61
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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 61
“According to the finest physician in Bellaon who visited here before, the Red-Root Herb stops bleeding instantly. And this is Serin Root.”
She snapped off a piece of the dirt-covered root and succeeded in shoving it into Serion’s mouth.
“Its effect on organ regeneration is most impressive, but skin regeneration shows results even faster, he said.”
“Gack! That’s filthy… And it tastes bitter!”
Serion glared at Luciel as though he meant to devour her, then reached out to seize her by the nape of the neck.
Yet his attempt was swiftly thwarted by Bael, who had grasped the situation and moved in.
“If you don’t let go, I’ll make you swallow dirt.”
He grabbed Serion roughly and repeated the motion of shoving the plant root back into his mouth.
Forced to chew and swallow the grass root, Serion’s mind began to fog.
It was the first time in his life he had endured such treatment.
He attempted to gather magical power to kill the two criminals before him, but whether from the earlier blow or some peculiarity of the place, his body refused to obey.
Blood, grass root, and soil mixed in a foul taste that clung to his tongue, and as Bael and Luciel took turns trying to wipe the blood from his face, he could hardly breathe.
Madmen.
Those deserving to be ground to dust.
There was no other choice now.
The moment he returned to the Imperial Palace, he would order the guards who surely searched for him to arrest both of them.
And after prolonged torture, he would grant them a death so excruciating that it might finally ease his rage.
“It’s too late regardless. They’re already searching for me at the Imperial Palace.”
He snarled at Bael and Luciel.
“You cannot kill me—the moment I return, I’ll have you cut limb from limb, and…”
“Oh. It’s healed.”
As if unheeding his threats, Luciel’s green eyes sparkled with delight.
“Wow, it really is fast! The wounds inside his mouth are all gone, and the bleeding has completely stopped!”
“Really?”
Bael, with audacious disregard, pried open Serion’s mouth to examine his wounds.
“Let’s go back.”
“Right.”
“You wretches!”
Making no effort to hear the rest of Serion’s fury, the two of them dragged him again and seated him in the center of the Magic Circle.
A familiar crackling sound filled the air.
In the next moment, he found himself standing once more in the center of the Imperial Palace.
“So you’ve made peace with death.”
“Your Highness?”
At his sharp words, Luciel tilted her head in confusion.
“I don’t understand what you mean. Why would we…?”
“…Playing innocent now?”
Serion’s face twisted with fury.
“While you’re erasing the Magic Circle with your foot? Is anyone here?”
The moment Serion shouted, a throng of figures appeared in the distance, moving toward them.
Bael and Luciel swallowed hard in unison.
What approached was far more than a handful of guards.
Five attendants, five ladies-in-waiting, five guards, and the Head Attendant.
At their center, the Emperor and Empress, with a pale and terrified Debron and Edwin trailing behind.
Having heard Serion’s shout, all their eyes fixed upon the three of them.
“Guards, seize those two!”
Serion commanded the nearest guard.
“They have wounded me.”
“Wounded? You?”
Before the guard could move, the Empress asked in alarm.
“What has happened?”
The Emperor regarded him and Bael with a similar expression of bewilderment.
Behind them, Debron’s complexion grew progressively paler.
“This Bael wounded you?”
“Father, Mother, I beseech you to apprehend these criminals at once. They kidnapped me.”
Serion knelt on one knee and made a formal petition to the Emperor.
“They removed me from the Imperial Palace and confined me by force until just now. I resisted and returned as quickly as possible, but… they must have held me for at least thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes?”
The Emperor and Empress stared at him in incomprehension.
“Where could you have gone? You’re here.”
“A previously closed dimension must have been opened.”
Serion spoke with certainty.
“They transported me somewhere through a Magic Circle and returned. I witnessed symbols denoting space-time inscribed within the Circle’s geometry… and these criminals possess knowledge of opening dimensions. How much time has passed here?”
“We…”
The Emperor and Empress exchanged glances, their words trailing off.
“Your Highness, it has been less than five minutes since you left the Secondary Palace.”
As the Head Attendant finished the sentence for them, Serion’s brow furrowed.
“Five minutes?”
He regarded the Head Attendant in confusion.
Five minutes—what did that mean?
He had already spent nearly five minutes locked in confrontation with those two within the Palace itself, and the grass-root torture in that bizarre garden had lasted well over thirty minutes.
“I am… I have been wounded.”
He continued.
His first priority was to have the criminals arrested.
“Blood was flowing from my nose and mouth…”
“Your Highness, I do not observe any visible wounds.”
The Head Attendant tilted his head, examining Serion’s face.
Only then did Serion touch his own face.
The nose that had ached moments before was unharmed, and the blood that had flowed had been wiped clean by Luciel—no traces remained on his skin.
“There is a trace of dirt near the mouth, but did Your Highness perhaps stumble…?”
“I did not stumble! There should be wounds inside my mouth—”
As he spoke, he ran his tongue across the inside of his mouth.
There was no taste of blood. No pain.
He could not even locate where the wound had been.
“Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped him.
So that was it.
If they had opened a dimension rather than moved physically, then the rules within it would differ.
In thirty minutes, wounds healed as if washed away, and herbs grew there that the Imperial Court did not possess.
And those same thirty minutes flowed at a different rate than time outside.
And they had weaponized this fact to make Serion seem like a madman?
Serion’s eyes gleamed as he fixed them upon Bael and Luciel.
They had planned this from the start.
One of them had the audacity to strike the Crown Prince’s Royal Body and draw blood from his nose, while the other dragged him fallen and tossed him into the center of the Magic Circle, even sitting upon him.
Since there was no way he could endure all of it, they simply spirited him away to a space where time did not flow, treated him, and feigned innocence.
“…There will be bloodstains.”
Serion muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Look at my hands.”
The Head Attendant flinched.
Indeed, Serion’s palms bore several streaks of blood.
Moreover, the blood had not yet dried.
“Is this Your Highness’s blood? Do you truly have wounds upon your Royal Body…?”
“It is mine.”
Just as the Head Attendant was about to examine Serion’s nose again for injuries, Bael stepped forward and spoke.
Serion’s eyes widened.
In that brief moment, he had seen it.
Crunch.
Bael biting his own lip to draw blood.
“My blood, Your Majesty.”
Bael nodded, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“What in the world is this? Did you two fight? I notice there’s blood on Luciel’s sleeve as well.”
“We did not fight.”
Bael met the Emperor’s gaze directly as he explained.
“I was struck one-sidedly. My mouth was cut and bled, and Luciel wiped it clean—the stain on her sleeve is from that.”
“That brazen liar—”
“Your Highness sought to detain us as we were leaving the Palace and commanded, by Imperial Decree, that Luciel provide more cuisine.”
Serion tried to interject, but Bael cut him off again.
“When we said it was impossible without Your Majesty’s and my grandfather’s permission, you pressured us, saying ‘I will find your weakness.'”
Madness.
Serion muttered every curse, real and imagined, through gritted teeth.
To turn me into an enemy like this?
Not in some subtle shadow war, but so blatantly?
Serion had been the Emperor’s successor since birth.
There was no Branch Line to rival him, and save for the docile Arnen, he had no siblings.
How did they intend to regard the next Emperor moving forward?
How would the decades after his coronation unfold?
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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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