Chapter 54

I only felt a slight headache, but there were still no clear symptoms to identify the poison.

Even this headache may not be due to poison, but an illusion caused by anxiety that has eroded my whole body.

It may have been done to prevent symptoms from being noticeable. If a slave eats poison and become unable to work, they won’t be worth selling.

They’ll die without an antidote, so the symptoms would have been weakly controlled to keep them from working.

However, if this happens, it would be futile.

“Excuse me.”

I approached the woman sitting close by.

The red-haired woman had a young face enough to appear to be in her late teens.

She twitched her freckled nose as I approached, but didn’t turn her back.

“Is what he says true? All the people who ran away are dead?”

Knowing how the other slaves died might lead to a clue.

“Yes.”

The woman replied curtly.

“How did they die? With blood? With convulsions? Grabbing their heart?”

I rushed the woman.

“I don’t know, it’s just that the children who ran away died of poison, but they don’t show us the body.”

“Then it could be a lie. It may be that they kill the fugitives themselves and insist that it was because of the poison.”

The woman shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s hard to say it’s a lie. If there’s no antidote, my head hurts a lot

“An antidote. What does the antidote look like?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders again.

“I don’t know. It’s mixed in the bread that comes out every meal. I’m not dead yet, so maybe it got an antidote.”

The indifferent answer made me stop thinking.

It would be almost impossible to determine the taste of the antidote mixed in bread.

“Don’t worry too much. It’s meal time soon, so you can take the antidote soon.”

The woman tapped me on the shoulder.

But it didn’t comfort me at all.

The woman clicked her tongue when I didn’t move my head.

“You have a pretty face, so you’ll be sold to a good place. Pretty girls are tougher anyway. Bad luck.”

It wasn’t long before it was mealtime, as the female slave named Sally said.

The guards gave us a loaf of bread.

“I’m watching, so don’t try to take someone else’s.”

Sally ate the bread in one bite as soon as she received it.

“Rina, you eat quickly, too. There are people who’ll really steal it.”

With those words, I slowly put the bread in my mouth, chewed it, and savored the taste.

However, no matter how much I chewed, it was only a bitter taste I tasted. It was difficult to determine whether this was just the original taste of cheap bread or the taste of the antidote.

“Why? Are they stealing it because of the antidote?”

Sally gulped down the bread and nodded.

“Yes, there was a person like that in the next detention center. He was trying to run away. Eating twice as much bread will have a great detoxification effect.”

I drew nearer to Sally.

This could also be a clue.

“So? Did he decipher it?”

Sally shook her head.

“No, he didn’t last long.”

“Then… when will they give us the poison again?”

She scratched her head curiously at my next question.

“What? Why will they give us poison again?”

I pointed to a little piece of my bread.

“If we stay here for a long time, we’ll eat a lot of this bread, too. They should feed it to us again before the poison disappears because of the antidote.”

Sally shrugged her shoulders.

“They didn’t give it back to me.”

Then I tried my best to look at her fingers.

“Let me see here……. I was here for nearly 10 days, but they never gave me that round thing again.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen anyone here who’s been poisoned again.”

“Huh…”

I sat back in a daze.

As I got to know more and more, everything was full of contradictions.

The poison is fatal enough for someone to die if they don’t keep taking the antidote, but it doesn’t show symptoms other than headaches right away.

If it’s because of the low dose, they’ll have to keep feeding them with new poison…….

“What’s so complicated about it?”

Sally tapped me.

“I heard from the guards that you already have a place to be sold to. Aren’t you completely hooked?”

Sally examined my face, which was still heavily bruised.

“Pray for this bruise to disappear quickly, you punk. That’s how you get out of this shithole as soon as possible.”

Sally looked more closely at my face.

“I think you lost a lot of weight already”

“Ugh…”

I moaned and pounded my head on the wall a few times.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

Sally clicked her tongue.

“Pretty girls do it more anyway.”

☆*: .｡.  .｡.:*☆

Knoxus gasped for breath after the search dog ran off of the forest path.

Just before passing through the forest road and entering a large garden, someone roughly grabbed Knoxus’ arm.

“Heuk, Your Majesty!”

Cardan, who appeared unexpectedly, blocked Knoxus’ mouth.

“The base is just beyond that yard. Why don’t you be quiet?

Noxus nodded hastily.

“Keep that bastard quiet, too.”

Cardan stared at the search dog, which began to whine.

“Sit down! Lie down!”

At the command of the Knoxus, the search dog flopped down.

“But how did Your Majesty arrive before us…?”

Knoxus looked at Cardan with questionable eyes.

“I told you to leave your dog behind.”

Cardan looked pitifully at Knoxus.

At that time, the sound of a horse was heard, and someone’s footsteps got closer.

Cardan and Knoxus hurriedly hid themselves in the bushes. The well-trained search dog also read the serious atmosphere and quietly stood by the Knoxus.

Before long, two men were seen through the bushes.

Wearing a knife handle at the waist and a crude leather vest, they looked like soldiers guarding the base.

“I feel stiff trying to protect the entrance all day long.”

The man who appeared first spit and stretched.

The man who followed yawned, scratching his gray hair.

“That’s right. Are there any slaves running away? I want to warm up after a long time.”

Maybe they came out in a hurry to take a leak, because they both began to do their ‘business’ while lowering their pants.

Cardan and Knoxus couldn’t move and held their breath because of the stream of water falling too close.

“There’s no point in hunting runaway slaves. They’re going to die soon anyway.”

“Right? As they started using the medicine, this job became boring. It’s money.”

The man who finished his business first put on his pants.

Cardan listened to the word medicine.

It seemed to be true that they used poison as Erina warned. It would be powerful enough if it causes the slaves to collapse not long after running away.

He felt like his mouth was drying up.

“Why, I work with the taste of looking down on the slaves I’m catching these days. Did you see the slave who came in this morning?”

A gray-haired man grinned and continued to talk to his colleague who said things had become boring.

“Wow, I’ve never seen such a girl in my life. Geoffrey, I thought he was senile when he asked to find him an elf. How did you find it?”

When the story of Erina came out, Cardan’s body hardened. His blood was boiling hot and frozen cold.

Next to him, Knoxus also clenched his fist so strongly that the veins on the back of his hand popped out.

“Hey, Arthur. If you touch it for no reason and get it scratched, you’ll be in big trouble.”

Even though his colleague patted him dry, the gray-haired man just kept smiling.

“We could roll on the floor, and no one will even be able to tell if I play with her a little.”

“Damn it–”

Cardan reflexively grabbed Knoxus, who was about to run out, and whispered in his ear.

“Shut up. Are you going to mess up everything?”

Knoxus struggled for a moment, but it was not enough to escape Cardan’s grasp.

It was then.

“Didn’t you hear anything?”

The gray-haired man snorted as the person who felt the sign frowned and looked around.

“It must be a wild animal. You made a fuss about raccoons last time, you’re too scared.”

“……is that so?”

With those words, the two moved away from the bushes.

It wasn’t until they completely disappeared that Cardan relaxed from his grip on the Knoxus.

Knoxus swung his arms wide and shook off Cardan.

The current Knoxus seemed to disregard him, to the point where he wondered if he was the same one who trembled in front of him while hanging on the wall of the conference hall. He leaped at Cardan with glaring eyes.

“Your Majesty! Are you going to leave them like this?”

Is his life not worth it, or is there something that is more important than his life? Knoxus was adamant.

“I can’t do that. I’ll go in alone.”

“Stop.”

At his command, Knoxus, who was about to run out of the bushes, froze on the spot.

He couldn’t move except to shake in place under the pressure of winding his whole body. A raw fear permeated deep into his bones.

“If you take a step away, your legs will not be completely intact.”

Not even a small dagger was hung from Cardan’s waist, but Knoxus was sure.

If Cardan comes forward to cut his leg, it will be possible without a blade.

Knoxus barely nodded in agreement.

At the same time the pressure was lifted, Knoxus collapsed on the spot.

The search dog, which was trembling with Cardan’s murderous aura, wandered around the Knoxus with a whining sound.

Not being able to lift a finger, Knoxus uttered his words repeatedly.

“Ha, if you come……. Haah. The duke. How… How……. hah.”

“She’s your master yet you know so little about her.”

Cardan clapped his tongue small.

“Do you think the Duke wants you to go wild now?”

“Ha, but…….”

Even though his face was distorted with pain, the expression of concern did not disappear from the eyes of Knoxus.

Cardan raised his eyebrows as he faced the expression.

“It is the Duke of Baloa. It will be fine.”

However, even while saying this, his mouth was stuffy.

Cardan once again stressed whether he hypnotized himself that she would be fine.

“It will be alright. If it’s the Duke of Baloa.”

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ advanced chapters available here