The Prince’s Nanny, Her Specialty Is Assassination - Chapter 144

Chapter 144. The Prophet and the Guardian (2)

“What does Her Highness the Second Consort like most?”

It was an unexpected question.

The maids looked at her in surprise.

“You’re curious about that?”

“Yes, I’d like to keep it in mind when I embroider.”

Already thinking about winning favor.

The maids laughed as they regarded the young, talented new seamstress maid.

“Don’t try too hard, dear.”

“That’s right. We seamstress maids have nothing to gain from catching Her Highness the Second Consort’s eye.”

“What? Why?”

The new maid tilted her head in confusion.

One of the older-looking maids glanced around, then whispered in her ear, “Well, the late First Consort was originally one of Her Highness the Second Consort’s seamstress maids.”

***

A large, labyrinthine garden lay along the path to the Second Consort’s palace.

Within it stood an old stone gazebo that few people ever visited.

“So? You haven’t discovered anything besides the fact that the First Consort used to be the Second Consort’s seamstress maid?” I asked, leaning against the back of one of the gazebo’s pillars.

The girl with a basket over one arm nodded instead of answering.

Her face was identical to those of the girls I saw at the Golden Goose Trading Company.

‘She said she planted one in the Emperor’s palace. It seems she moved her straight to the Second Consort’s palace.’

It’d barely been any time since I asked her to investigate the House of Radcliffe.

Somnia had immediately transferred her private informant hidden within the imperial palace to the Second Consort’s palace.

‘I heard it’s difficult for attendants in the Emperor’s palace to transfer elsewhere.’

I couldn’t begin to guess how she’d arranged it.

‘Did she threaten one of the nobles involved?’

The Emperor’s head attendant, for instance.

I straightened away from the pillar, putting those idle thoughts aside.

“Good. Then let’s meet here again in fifteen days.”

The girl gave a small nod, then casually turned to leave.

“Oh, wait.”

A memory flashed through my mind, and I stopped her.

“Have you heard anyone mention a prophet or a guardian there?”

Prophet and guardian.

Both words came from the mouths of the mercenaries hired by the House of Radcliffe and the members of Breath of the Angel.

I didn’t know what they meant, but they seemed closely connected to the Second Prince’s faction.

“I haven’t, but I’ll let you know if I do.”

The magical doll, or was she called “Lily” here?

With my back turned to her, I answered briefly, “Good. I’m counting on you, Lily.”

“Of course.”

Lily, the Second Consort’s seamstress maid, gave a soulless smile and walked lightly away.

Her face, utterly expressionless a moment ago, suddenly came alive.

Her expression was as animated as a real, living person’s.

‘Has she already fixed the weakness I pointed out last time?’

Unlike the doll I saw in Paradis, the one before me now gave off a faint sound like a heartbeat.

‘What a twisted hobby.’

It was a clear reflection of Somnia’s perverse belief that anything fake ought to look real, no matter what it was.

‘Well, it works in my favor.’

It spared me the risk of sneaking into the Second Consort’s palace myself.

After checking for any suspicious presence nearby, I quietly left.

***

“Your Highness, so this is where you were.”

When I returned to the Third Prince’s palace, Edwin wasn’t in the study, and I spent quite some time searching for him.

After repeatedly coming up empty, I finally learned where he was when I ran into Catherine.

“You don’t even knock anymore?”

Sage scolded me as I entered the cottage.

“Are we the sort of people who need to knock?”

“Honestly, you only act like we’re close when it suits you.”

Beside the grumbling old sage, Edwin brightened at the sight of me.

“You’re back?”

“Why do you look like that, Your Highness?”

For the first time in a while, Edwin looked positively grubby.

With his sleeves rolled up, he was busily sorting the assortment of plants on the large round table.

Judging by the foul smell, medicinal herbs and poisonous plants were mixed together haphazardly.

“Sage.”

I addressed him with a frown.

He was already pursing his lips, apparently feeling guilty.

“Prince Edwin is not your assistant.”

“I know! He’s not my assistant!”

Sage edged behind Edwin.

As if he were short enough for that to hide him.

“But he is my pupil! Is it so wrong for a pupil to help his teacher?”

Instead of answering, I fixed him with a steady glare.

Edwin waved his hands with an awkward smile. “Rachel, I’m fine. You came to get me because it’s almost dinner, right? I’ve still got a little work left. Just wait a moment.”

“Haa.”

He’d become such a little lamb.

In the past, he would’ve barked about why he had to do something like this.

I fed him poison every day, so how had all the venom drained out of his temper?

In the end, I said nothing more and dropped into an empty chair.

“Master, this one’s both poisonous and medicinal. How should I sort it?”

“Hmm, only the roots are poisonous, so cut them off and sort them separately.”

Was it because they’d spent so much time together?

The two worked quite well together.

‘I thought he only taught him how to rule.’

I watched Sage, who seemed far more enthusiastic than usual.

‘Well, medicine is his main specialty.’

He was, after all, the man who developed a cure for an incurable disease.

There was probably no one in the Empire whose medical knowledge could rival Sage’s.

“Hmm?”

I was killing time, idly bobbing my foot, when I noticed a stone on the desk.

At first, I wondered what a stone was doing there, but a closer look revealed it was a mana stone.

‘But it feels a little different from the mana stones I know.’

Mana stones normally had a bluish hue.

The one on the desk, however, was reddish.

I could sense a faint trace of mana, so it had to be a mana stone. Or was it something else?

“Sage.”

“Oh, what is it? We’re not finished yet.”

“What’s that stone? It seems to be a mana stone, but it doesn’t look like one.”

Sage, who answered irritably, stopped working at my question.

“Oh, that.”

The old sage suddenly heaved a sigh and looked troubled.

“It is a mana stone. To be precise, one that came from a mutant monster’s body.”

A mana stone from a mutant monster’s body?

The King of Adamant’s face flashed through my mind.

“What?”

Edwin looked at Sage in surprise.

“A mana stone came out of a mutant monster’s body?”

“Yes.”

At his pupil’s expectant look, Sage set down the herbs.

He sat in the chair beside the desk and spoke again.

“You both remember the mutant monster we saw in Luxen Village, don’t you?”

“Yes! I remember!”

Sage nodded at Edwin’s answer and continued, “I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but that wasn’t the only time a mutant monster appeared in Luxen. They appeared several times before that, too.”

Luxen was a plague-stricken village.

The only force available to fight the monsters was the guards who protected the village.

“There were a few mutant monsters the guards managed to kill back then, fighting with everything they had.”

Small gems of a peculiar color emerged from the corpses of the monsters the guards killed.

Sage wasn’t interested, but his assistant, Leo, thought they resembled mana stones and secretly stole them.

At first, he thought it was merely a coincidence, but small mana stones continued to turn up inside mutant monsters.

“So what makes this mana stone different from an ordinary one?”

At a glance, only the color seemed different.

I studied the ominous, blood-red mana stone as I spoke, “I doubt its appearance is the only difference.”

“Of course it isn’t. This one’s a fake.”

“A fake?”

“Yes. An artificially created mana stone.”

An artificially created mana stone.

I’d heard that mages sometimes condensed their own mana to create artificial mana stones.

Though this was my first time seeing one.

“But that’s not what matters.”

Sage suddenly began rummaging through a shelf on the wall.

What he found was a bundle of dried leaves.

“This is a common weed called ‘devil’s weed.’ What’s unusual about it is that it only reacts to divine power, and it burns when divine power touches it.”

A plant that burned on contact with divine power.

I immediately understood why it was called devil’s weed.

“If I bring it close to this…”

Sage brought the dried devil’s weed close to the mana stone.

Whoosh.

The devil’s weed instantly caught fire.

The small flame flared fiercely at first, then quickly died.

“Oh!”

Edwin clapped a hand over his mouth in surprise, while my expression grew grave.

“See?”

Sage looked down at the mana stone uneasily.

“This mana stone contains divine power, faint though it may be.”

“That’s impossible!”

Edwin shook his head, his eyes wide.

“Divine power and mana repel each other. They can’t coexist!”

As Edwin said, divine power and mana were opposing forces.

Divine power purified mana, while mana corrupted divine power, making the two fundamentally incompatible.

‘And yet there’s divine power in a mana stone, which is essentially a lump of mana.’

Logically, it made no sense.

Sage scratched his head at the prince’s words.

“I agree.”

He suddenly picked up the devil’s weed he’d held near the mana stone.

“Actually, saying it ‘contains’ divine power isn’t quite accurate. Look.”

Only the tips of the devil’s weed’s leaves were slightly singed.

“With a reaction this weak, we should say it bears traces of divine power, rather than contains it.”