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Chapter 14
In the office, Ollendo addressed Kaien, who sat with bored eyes, in a calm tone.
“Yes. As you instructed, Master, traces of mana have been continuously detected from the magic tool installed in the Grand Duchess’s room.”
Though the Dermis Ducal House is a family with innate magic, Wendy Remia Dermis is known to be a being with virtually no mana aptitude.
How could this be?
“What is the nature of the mana?”
“It is far from malicious.”
“So it is not a curse, at least.”
It was an extremely faint amount of mana. So faint that those without keen senses would not notice. Kaien would never have known either, had he not happened to visit the Grand Duchess’s room on an errand. He immediately ordered Ollendo to investigate and had a small magic tool designed to detect mana hung in the room disguised as decoration.
After monitoring for two months, he received a report that the color of the magic tool changed once or twice every fortnight, according to the servant who cleaned the room.
At first, he thought it might be the influence of the magic stones used in the field, but since the mana was detected only sporadically despite her visiting the field daily, that did not seem to be the case either.
Above all, the nature of the mana felt quite distinctive to him. Though the report Ollendo presented stated that no particular abnormalities were found, the unease did not go away.
“For now, keep watch over the Grand Duchess’s surroundings. If she attempts contact with any suspicious individuals, attach a tail immediately.”
“Understood.”
“So, did the Grand Duchess go to the forest again today?”
“No, today is her day off, so she went out to a city nearby.”
At first, she had gathered all sorts of plants from the forest and planted them in the field, and afterward, claiming she liked the forest, she had been going in and out as if on a stroll twice a week.
Either way, it was not the behavior of a noble young lady.
“She had completed all her tasks before going.”
Ollendo’s face, as he subtly added that, was expressionless as always, but Kaien was not fooled.
“You seem strangely lenient toward that woman, Ollendo.”
When the woman first came to the Grand Ducal Castle, he too had shown considerable hostility, but had his tone not softened quite a bit?
“I do not dislike diligent people. Of course, if it is confirmed that she is the Grand Duke’s enemy, that would be a different matter.”
Despite the gaze fixed steadily on him, Ollendo said his piece firmly.
“It is an open secret in high society that the second daughter of the Dermis Ducal House was not treated well within her family. She would have sufficient reason to harbor resentment, would she not?”
“That too could be the Duke’s groundwork laid in advance. He acted as though he were marrying off a half-wit who could not even inherit a single scrap of mana to me, and yet the situation is unfolding quite interestingly.”
To his butler, who quietly closed his mouth, Kaien added flatly.
“The transaction three years ago was the same. The moment Alexei collapsed from illness, he suddenly claimed to have a cure, as if he had prepared it in advance.”
It was utterly suspicious, but saving Alexei’s life was more urgent than raising such doubts at the time. That was why he had acquiesced, but Kaien had never accepted that situation, neither then nor now.
He was simply waiting quietly for the right moment.
He had investigated secretly for three years, but there had been no clues about the circumstances at that time, and the Duke’s pressure for the marriage had only grown stronger.
He had no particular woman in mind anyway, and he was not the type to care about disgrace, so he accepted the marriage with the intention of seeing what the Duke would do.
The problem was that his wife was a far more unpredictable type than he had imagined.
She had been unusual from the first night—unfazed even when slighted, seeming to accommodate him while saying everything she needed to say.
In truth, if she had overstepped, he would have used that as an excuse to firmly distance himself long ago, but the woman had truly kept her word faithfully.
She never came to him unless necessary, managed the household affairs including the renovation work of the Grand Ducal Castle diligently, and aside from the vegetable garden in the back, did not waste a single coin of the budget.
When she asked for dignity maintenance funds sufficient to buy a dress or two, that was one thing, but she never even called for a tailor.
‘Duke Dermis certainly told her to stay as close to me as possible.’
He could not tell whether this behavior, bordering on indifference, was a strategy to attract his interest or entirely genuine.
To the point where he occasionally wondered if what the woman had said to the Duke back then might have been nothing more than a vague deflection.
“Do not let your guard down. Let us not forget that we have brought the enemy’s pawn into our most private space.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
Kaien, who had been glancing at Ollendo as he bowed deeply, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
His headache was worsening again.
The Floren Forest, visited after a week, felt truly welcoming.
These days, I had hardly been able to go out because I was handling the tasks Sei requested and investigating additional information.
Fiona spoke in a voice tinged with laughter as she followed behind me, walking as if skipping toward the inner forest.
“Madam, are you that happy?”
“Of course. When work is hard, one must do nature therapy like this.”
“Ther……?”
“It means healing the mind and body. Ah, it feels so good!”
I spread both arms and inhaled the fresh air deeply. They say green is a color that is easy on the eyes, and indeed my eyes did feel a bit more comfortable.
I muttered to myself again. Eyes, see how much I cherish you? Never get sick, and let us be together for a long, long time.
Since this is a fantasy worldview, glasses did exist, but no matter how I thought about it, simply taking good care of my eyes was always the better choice.
Think about it. To be unable to see ahead just because you lack a single glass bead—does that make any sense?
Come to think of it, Serhi, Alek’s friend, wears glasses by the time of the main story—perhaps because he is the scholarly type who must sit at a desk for long hours.
The grass rustled under my feet as I strode forward. I had been chattering like a bird when I suddenly felt something off and turned around.
“Fiona?”
She had definitely been following behind me just a moment ago, but she was nowhere to be seen.
No, we were walking the same stroll route we always took—why suddenly?
As I stood there bewildered, a faint voice reached my ear. I was not sure if it could even be called a voice, but it was certain that I heard a sound.
It was a ticklish sound, as if someone were whispering right into my ear.
“What……?”
Though puzzled, I pushed through the trees in the direction the sound came from, and suddenly my field of vision opened wide.
Before I knew it, I had stepped into a wide clearing carpeted with pale green grass. At its center stood a massive tree reminiscent of a sacred tree, extending its trunk.
The amazing part was not just that.
Someone was tightly bound to the tree trunk, which looked to be at least several hundred years old.
The moment I saw the face, wrapped in thick tree vines with eyes quietly closed, I found myself murmuring.
“A person……?”
Well, judging by the features alone, it looked like a person.
Who on earth could it be, tied up tightly in the middle of a forest like this? As if sealed.
“Wait a moment.”
When I carefully approached the tree, the face of the person bound to it became clearly visible.
Judging by the build, it was a young girl who looked to be just over ten years old. She wore a plain white dress, and her long hair, tinged with pale purple, was tangled in the tree.
Even at a glance, it was not an ordinary-looking face. Even considering this is a fantasy world, people with rainbow-colored hair were extremely rare.
“But why does she look familiar?”
I circled around the girl, lost in thought. It is one thing if I had no idea at all, but that state where something is on the tip of your tongue is the most frustrating.
It makes you want to stubbornly insist on remembering, does it not? Is it just me?
“Purple, purple……? In the original work, this forest is also close to purple.”
Basically, the monsters that are Draken’s subordinates possess purple mana. Well, when it comes to expressing evil, there is nothing quite like dark purple.
As I nodded in understanding, a fact flashed through my mind. I creaked my head up and looked toward the girl again.
“No, no, wait a moment.”
Was the final boss of this forest not…… a giant flower tree that was fixed in a huge clearing?
The form of that boss, commonly called <The Thorned Flower of Floren>, was probably a magical beast with only the upper body of a human woman atop a red-blooming flower.
Moreover, all of its main attack patterns were poison, so even those who came to subdue it were helpless against it. Only Alek, who as a dragon was immune to all poisons, could defeat the boss.
It was content from the early part of the work, and one of the events that left a particularly strong impression when I read it.
Why would it not be? From the description of this event onward, people began to feel that something was off.
No, to go from repeating episodes where monsters cause a commotion and everything ends warmly, to suddenly starting an event with a description of people dying in droves.
If you did not find that ominous, would that not be even stranger!
“……Is this real?”
Could this really be <The Thorned Flower of Floren>?
