Episode 435

Meanwhile, the knights popped open bottles and poured liquor madly into their glasses.

When attendants brought in steaming whole roasted boar on plates, the knights couldn’t wait any longer and got up to grab the plates themselves.

“???”

Before Lee Han could even look surprised, the knights who had snatched the plates drew their daggers and carved out chunks of meat. The knights devoured the juicy, fatty meat in one bite.

‘Huh?’

Lee Han was taken aback.

The order of the gathering was different from usual.

Normally, at gatherings, people would greet each other, chat, enjoy some games, and only then share the prepared meal together…

But here, the food and drink started immediately.

Looking to the side, Angrago and Bartrek were also hurrying to stack food onto their plates.

“Moradi. I hope you don’t get angry and just listen. I’m really asking because I don’t know… Are knights’ gatherings always like this?”

“…Yeah. Why?”

“No, I just found it surprising. You eat so heartily.”

“……”

Although Giselle didn’t show it, she felt embarrassment welling up inside.

The Beechwood Knights, who usually acted with aristocratic elegance, couldn’t help but reveal their true nature as knights when it came time to eat.

She had never been ashamed of her identity as a knight, but the Beechwood Knights’ pretensions of nobility made her feel embarrassed.

‘If they were going to eat like this, why did they bother with all that fussy stuff earlier?’

Lee Han thought to himself.

If the knights had been this relaxed from the start, he wouldn’t have had to keep up with all those pointless manners outside.

“So you eat and drink first, and then talk?”

Giselle nodded.

“This is so much better. I wish they’d done this from the start.”

“…?!?!?!!”

As Giselle widened her eyes at Lee Han, Jeancliffe returned.

After greeting the knights, Jeancliffe came back holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in the other.

“I’d like to serve you a drink! For those who helped the Beechwood Knights!”

“Ah. Thank you.”

Lee Han took the glass. The rich wine filled the glass to the brim.

Jeancliffe’s glass and Giselle’s glass were also filled. The three raised their glasses together.

In that moment, Jeancliffe’s face twisted as he shouted.

“It’s poison!!!!!”

Clang!

The fastest to respond was Giselle. The moment she heard Jeancliffe, she threw her half-drunk glass to the floor.

‘No way!’

Giselle’s eyes brimmed with shock.

It was shocking to find poison at a gathering of knights, but even more shocking was the fact that Giselle hadn’t detected anything at all.

Unlike the knights gathered here, Giselle and the White Tiger Tower students were being trained as magicians.

Given the unique properties of the poison, it should have been impossible for her not to notice.

How…?

‘What poison is this?’

Giselle quickly scanned the area. She saw Angrago and Bartrek, already tipsy, frozen with empty bottles in hand. Quickly giving up on them, she turned to Lee Han.

‘If it’s Wardanaz, maybe he noticed…!’

But Lee Han’s glass was empty. Giselle was so incredulous she shrieked in a sharp voice.

“You drank all of that!!”

“I had no choice, it’s manners…”

“Are you joking?! Just because we’re outside school doesn’t mean you can slack off!”

Honestly, Lee Han felt wronged.

Poison, if well made and effectively served, always put the drinker at a substantial disadvantage.

“Nobody move—put down your drinks! You over there, put down the drink!”

Jeancliffe threw a table knife to shatter a bottle of wine. A knight about to drink straight from the bottle jumped in surprise.

“Sir Jeancliffe! What’s going on?”

“Are you mistaken? Poison… There’s nothing at all wrong with us.”

The tipsy knights were bewildered at Jeancliffe’s outburst.

They knew a thing or two about poisons themselves.

But they had never heard of a poison that caused absolutely no effect on the body.

Could Sir Jeancliffe have made a mistake?

“Damn it, I once heard something from an alchemist in the capital. At first, there’s nothing, but once the reagent in the food and the reagent in the drink mix, and after some time passes…”

Jeancliffe, well-connected, had encountered a new type of poison from an alchemist in the capital.

It was a poison based on mountain-spore mushrooms, and the alchemist had eagerly touted its uniqueness.

-When the various reagent ingredients are separate, there’s no effect at all, but after they mix and time passes, it turns into poison—there are few as devious as this.

To spot a poison that combines inside the body like this, you had to be familiar with all the reagents or know about the particular combinations.

Fortunately, Jeancliffe remembered the conversation and all the flavors of the reagents.

‘He actually remembered all that?’

Lee Han was dumbfounded by the knight’s crude approach.

It would have been less astonishing if he’d simply noticed something odd because he knew all the ingredients inside.

“I’ll call the healing magicians!”

Realizing this was no joke, the knights went pale and shouted.

Poison was a race against time.

Delay even a little, and there could be mass casualties.

But Lee Han stayed cool.

‘A poison like that isn’t very strong.’

A poison made to avoid detection by knights and magicians inevitably used weaker ingredients.

It was unlikely to be deadly.

“Sir Jeancliffe. What is the effect of the poison?”

“You become unable to use magic power for a while.”

The knights let out a sigh of relief.

If it just scattered magic power, it wasn’t all that dangerous.

“Who could have…?”

“Servants, don’t move! We’ll question each of you!”

“We’ll confirm the porters as well.”

“Who would use such poison here? Maybe it got mixed in by accident?”

The exits were closed and the investigation began, but the atmosphere was chaotic.

The anti-magicist disguised as a porter sneered inwardly.

‘They’ll never find it, no matter what.’

Their preparation had been truly meticulous and relentless.

Weeks before the gathering, they had surveyed the ingredients and drinks and distributed the mountain-spore mushroom-based poison among them.

It was the perfect revenge for the knights who had ruined their grand plan.

‘The signal has already been sent!’

The porter had sent the signal as soon as the knights began to eat and drink.

Having Jeancliffe detect it was unexpected, but they’d already drunk it anyway, so it didn’t matter…

There were also a few invited students besides the knights, but they were still fledglings.

On top of that, they’d drunk the poison too—their magic power was dispersed, and they weren’t even proper magicians.

In a way, they’d be even easier prey than the knights.

The plan was already close to eighty percent successful.

“Reveal yourself, emotion.”

“???”

One of the students suddenly waved a staff and cast a spell at a servant.

The anti-magicist almost snorted in disbelief.

‘Digging your own grave!’

Since the Empire’s most versatile talents were magicians, interrogation by magic was of course possible.

But such spells weren’t omnipotent. The anti-magicist knew their limitations well.

They consumed a lot of magic and mental strength, so they should only be used on a narrowed field of suspects.

Casting it all over the place in a hurry like this…

No wonder they were still just a student.

“Reveal yourself, emotion.”

“Reveal yourself, emotion.”

“Reveal, reveal, reveal…”

“????”

The anti-magicist was now bewildered.

What was happening?

‘A trick? Oh. I see! He’s bluffing! Using his head…’

Pretending to chant a fake spell to gauge the target’s reaction.

Clever for a student.

But the anti-magicist was unmoved.

‘Go ahead and try.’

He kept his expression in check, sneering inwardly.

“Reveal yourself, emotion… ??”

Lee Han stared at the porter. Then, as if exasperated, he spoke.

“It’s this person.”

“Catch him!!!”

Furious knights swarmed in. The anti-magicist screamed.

How on earth—?!?

• * *

Knights were masters of interrogation. The thoroughly roughed-up anti-magicist spilled everything about the gang outside.

“What utter nonsense…!”

“Grumbling about us fulfilling our knightly duties! That’s mercenaries for you!”

The Beechwood Knights, who didn’t know the full story, were enraged.

If the grudge had the slightest justification, they could respect it as enemies; as it was, this was venting an irrelevant grudge on them.

“That’s how anti-magicist scum are! Seeds of evil corrupting the Empire!”

“……”

Lee Han broke out in a cold sweat.

Not because of the poison, but because he’d figured out the situation.

‘…Was it a mistake to ask the knights for help?’

Trying to make things easier for himself by asking for the knights’ help had come back like this.

If the knights were to get hurt, Lee Han would never forgive himself.

“We can’t sit around. We must prepare for an attack.”

“We know.”

Jeancliffe’s face grew grave.

“It’s dangerous. The knights here are not used to this kind of melee.”

‘He knew?’

Lee Han was surprised to see Jeancliffe calmly evaluating his own order.

Since the Beechwood Knights put fellowship and socializing first, they were especially disadvantaged in this kind of situation.

“Wardanaz. My magic power…”

“I can’t gather it.”

Angrago and Bartrek also looked bleak. So did the other knights. The mountain-spore mushroom poison was now complete and starting to spread.

Jeancliffe was desperately circulating his own magic power to withstand it, but didn’t look good.

“I see. Understood. Wait. I’ll make an antidote. I don’t know how much I can make before the attack begins, but…”

“…What?”

“What did you say?!”

Both Jeancliffe, wondering how to prepare to fight, and Lee Han’s friends were aghast.

You know how to make an antidote?!

“H-How!? Did you know about this poison?”

“No… I don’t. And it’s not a perfect antidote, either. It’s made with holy magic, so we’ll have to see how effective it is.”

Lee Han picked up his staff and prepared holy magic.

He’d never thought Siana priest’s semi-forced holy magic lessons would come in handy in this kind of situation.

If the Afha Order’s holy magic Lee Han awakened was Sacred Flame conversion, the Fleming Order’s holy magic was antidote creation.

“Holy magic… Are you a devout follower… No, wait… You’re from House Wardanaz…? This isn’t important right now… wait, wait. You shouldn’t force yourself to use magic if you’re low on power!”

Jeancliffe, muttering, panicked and tried to stop Lee Han.

No matter how urgent, using something as draining as holy magic when out of power was too dangerous.

But before he could be stopped, Lee Han had already produced the antidote. The wine in the wine bottle turned clear.

“Sir Jeancliffe first!”

“I-I understand.”

Sir Jeancliffe gulped the colorless, transparent antidote.

Amazingly, he could feel his dispersing magic power rallying again.

“Next antidote coming up.”

Angrago waited eagerly at his side, ready to drink once the antidote was ready.

But Lee Han casually shoved Angrago aside and pulled Giselle forward.

In a situation like this, the fierce Moradi was far more reliable.

Angrago exclaimed, alarmed.

“Moradi drank less and is still in decent shape?!”

“…No. Angrago. As chief student of alchemy, I can tell Moradi’s condition is worse.”

“??!”

R-Really?