Chapter 241: A Bad Feeling
“Mr. Carle? Why did you suddenly ask me to come to the back door?”
After receiving Carle’s message, the old butler, Lug, hurried over to the back entrance. He knew very well how close Armand and Carle were, so with all the recent events, he arrived feeling a bit nervous. Only to find Carle already waiting by the carriage door.
“I need your help carrying this.”
“Ah—of course, Mr. Carle.”
Not quite understanding what was going on, the old butler walked over and helped Carle pull a large sack out of the carriage.
“Hm?”
He instinctively grabbed one end and lifted it with Carle. But the moment he felt the strange weight and shape inside, he suddenly realized—
Wait a second. What’s inside this sack... is a person?!
“Mr. Carle... this is...?”
Seeing Carle bring over a person stuffed inside a sack, Lug instinctively assumed it must be some important criminal needing to be secretly handled by Armand. So he started walking toward the basement.
“It’s Armand.”
Carle said this calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. So calmly, in fact, that it almost made the old butler drop his jaw.
“—Huh?!”
He gasped as soon as he heard his master's name. Then he quickly lowered his voice and glanced around to make sure no one else was nearby.
“You’re saying the one inside this sack is... Master Armand?!”
“Yeah. It’s him.”
“...Good heavens...”
Lug immediately changed course and led Carle toward Armand’s bedroom instead.
“H-How did this happen? Why was Master Armand stuffed in a sack?!”
“He looked like he was about to die.”
“Wh-What?! Please don’t scare me like that...!”
Carle’s words made Lug flinch so hard he nearly dropped Armand right then and there.
“This guy’s had a fever that won’t go down. He’s been burning up all night, with blood pouring out of his nose. No matter how much I tried to wake him up, he didn’t respond at all. That’s why I had no choice but to bring him here in a sack.”
“Didn’t he go to look for Miss Evelia? How did things end up like this...?”
Together, Lug and Carle managed to get Armand back to his bedroom. As soon as they opened the sack, the heavy smell of medicine and blood hit them right in the face.
Even though most of Armand’s injuries were now covered up with medicine, and Carle had wiped away the worst of the blood, his condition still looked bad. He lay limp, breathing heavily and with a sharp, strained sound in his breath.
Lug had served by Armand’s side for many years. Just seeing those tissues stuffed in his nose told him what was going on. The way Armand looked now, worn out and pale, reminded him of the times in the past when Armand had barely clung to life.
As they gently moved Armand onto the bed, Carle asked.
“Lug, Armand must’ve told you before, right?”
“Hm? Told me what...?”
“Not to call a doctor.”
Even though the old butler and Armand were close, and they had probably agreed on things beforehand, Carle still felt it was safer to ask.
“Mm, don’t worry, Master Armand already told me everything. Thank you so much for bringing him back.”
“If I were the one injured, Armand would’ve done the same for me. It’s only right, no need to thank me.”
After helping lay Armand down properly on the bed, Carle let out a sigh of relief.
“How’s that girl, Rachel?”
“She’s awake now and having a meal. Looks like she was starving. She didn’t cry or make a fuss, just went straight for the food. The doctor you called said she’s very healthy.”
“That’s good. Since we don’t need the doctor anymore, I’ll take him back for now. If Armand wakes up, tell him not to worry about the Knights’ matters. He can think about work after he gets better.”
“Understood. Take care, sir. I won’t be seeing you out.”
“Mm.”
Carle nodded to Lug and turned to leave. It was clear he still had more he wanted to say to Armand, but since Armand wasn’t awake, he could only keep it inside.
Even though he was very worried, Carle didn’t show it on his face. His work, his family. They didn’t allow him the time or space to feel sad or angry for his best friend. After all, he wasn’t like Armand, who lived alone with nothing to lose. If Armand died, there wouldn’t be many people left to grieve.
To injure Armand this badly… what kind of person could have done it?
Carle had some guesses in his heart, but just to be safe, he’d wait until Armand woke up before talking about it.
Then again, knowing Armand’s personality, there was a good chance he wouldn’t tell Carle anything at all, and Carle would just be left worried for nothing.
After Carle left, the old butler began tending to the unconscious Armand. He carefully wiped him clean, changed him into fresh clothes, and after working hard for a while, finally had everything done. As he stood beside the bed, sweating and exhausted, he let out a long sigh.
He knew very well about the kind of poison in Armand’s body. Besides the Crown Prince and one specific doctor, he was the only one who knew.
He had watched young Armand slowly fight his way back from the effects of the poison. He had also seen how, after gaining a special kind of body from it, Armand began recklessly throwing his life on the line to get where he was now.
To the butler, Armand was like a son.
And seeing him like this, so weak and tired, he had countless things to say, but not a single word could come out.
Of course, Armand had always pulled through. Even when the poison attacks were worse than this, he had survived. But each time had been a gamble. And if he ever lost that gamble…
Then that would be the end.
The old butler still said nothing. He knew there was no point in speaking. No one was around, and Armand couldn’t hear him anyway.
He couldn’t even call out to him. Medicine didn’t work either. All he could do now was take care of Armand the same way he always had, and pray that, just like every time before, Armand would come back from the edge of death.
Just like Armand always said, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll get better on my own.’
“...Grandpa Butler?”
While the butler was finishing up, Rachel, who had just finished her meal in the side room, peeked her head into the doorway.
She hadn’t heard much from inside, but she had seen Carle leave with the doctor. Out of politeness, she had gone to the door to see them off. But at that moment, she heard the sound of someone busy in the next room.
Once the noise finally quieted down, she dared to peek inside. And when she saw the tired-looking old butler, she also saw Armand lying on the big bed beside him.
“—What happened to Dad?”
Other people might not notice it, but Rachel, who called herself a genius alchemist, could clearly smell the faint scent of medicine in the room, left behind even after the old butler had cleaned things up.
After all, she had worked for the royal family before. She knew that smell very well. It was the scent of a medicine used to cover up wounds, and it was even a modified version she had improved herself.
Rachel had done more than just a few things for the royal family. While her original goal was to earn funding for her research, in the end, she had contributed quite a bit to their projects. Her death really would have been unfair.
“Ah, Master Armand just caught a bit of a cold and has a fever. It’s nothing serious.”
The old butler made up a quick excuse, not just to stop Rachel from worrying, but also to avoid letting news of Armand’s injury spread. This kind of excuse might work on normal children, but for someone like Rachel, the kind lie didn’t fool her at all.
“……”
Rachel looked at Armand lying there. It was very clear, his condition was terrible.
So, she ran over and sat down at the side of Armand’s bed.
Rachel already knew that Armand had a serious stomach problem, but he had never explained how it started. While it might have come from going hungry as a child, based on his current condition, Rachel felt the illness wasn’t that simple.
Normal people with a fever might look pale or tired, but Armand’s face was pale underneath the red flush from the fever, and his lips had a strange color. It didn’t look like just a fever…
…It looked more like poisoning.
“Um… can I stay here with Dad for a while?”
“Hm?” The old butler seemed unsure. “But Master Armand…”
“I… I just really miss Dad… so I want to stay with him a little…”
Seeing the butler’s hesitation, Rachel quickly started crying. After spending so much time around Armand and Evelia, her acting skills had become almost perfect, even the old butler couldn’t tell if she was acting or being serious.
“Alright, alright… you poor child… Then, Rachel, you can stay here with Master Armand.”
The old butler sighed, then quietly left the room, leaving the space to the “father and daughter.”
After he was gone, Rachel wiped away her tears and climbed up next to Armand.
“Dad?”
She gently called out to him and lightly pushed his shoulder a few times. Armand didn’t react at all. She touched his forehead, and the burning heat made her frown deeply.
“……”
Next, she carefully lifted one of his eyelids. His blue eyes were dull and lifeless, covered by a gray haze. They looked completely out of focus.
Then she leaned down and placed her ear against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It was irregular and chaotic. One second it was beating hard and fast, and the next, it slowed down so much that it felt like it might stop altogether. The sound made her tense up completely.
It was just like… he was dying.
Nervously, Rachel looked around Armand’s room, searching for something. Finally, she found a small knife hidden between the layers of his mattress.
While softly whispering “I’m sorry,” she made a small cut on one of Armand’s darkened fingertips, letting a few drops of blood fall. She then brought the blood to her mouth and tasted it.
The taste of normal blood and poisoned blood was clearly different. Even though Rachel wasn’t quite at the level of someone who had “tasted every herb,” she could still tell if poison was present in blood.
With just one taste, she knew Armand’s body was now filled with a deadly poison made from a mix of many different toxins. And it wasn’t just any poison, it was an alchemical poison, the kind the body couldn’t naturally remove.
And the most frustrating part was… even though Rachel had figured out that Armand’s body was filled with poison…
She still had no way to save him.
If it were just herbal poison, she could probably handle it. But alchemical poison… the kind made by extracting toxins from different materials… if Rachel didn’t know what those materials were, then there was almost nothing she could do.
At the gates of the estate, Evelia finally arrived back by carriage. She stepped down and looked at the familiar main door.
“Miss Evelia?”
The old butler had kept things quiet, he told others that Evelia had just gone home for a break. The knights who didn’t know the truth had no idea she had been missing. But even so, they could clearly see the serious injuries on her body and the bruises and swelling on her face.
“—Miss Evelia, what happened to you?! Those wounds on your body…?!”
“It’s nothing important…”
“Nothing?! Oh no, Miss Evelia, you’re badly hurt! You have to go to the medical room right away...!”
“Miss Evelia—? You… you’ve come back?”
Just as the knight at the gate was about to take Evelia to the infirmary, the old butler came out from the house and saw the scene. Since Carle hadn’t told anyone except a few trusted knights about the possibility of Evelia being killed, the old butler only knew she had gone missing. But even that was enough to shock him, and now seeing her covered in wounds, he was even more surprised.
“Ah, Mr. Butler. I’m back. Is Mr. Armand still at the knights’ headquarters? When will he return?”
“No… let’s not talk about Master Armand yet, what happened to your injuries…”
“It’s nothing, Mr. Butler. When will Mr. Armand be back?”
Compared to the injuries on her body, which she truly thought were unimportant, Evelia clearly cared much more about Armand. After all, she had come back just to see him again.
“……”
Facing her question, the old butler, who had just finished taking care of Armand, hesitated with a troubled look on his face.
Seeing his expression, Evelia’s instincts kicked in, and a terrible feeling suddenly rose in her chest.
“Did something… happen to Mr. Armand?”
Her heart started pounding fast. Her throat tightened with anxiety, and her palms were covered in cold sweat.
“...It’s just that—Ah! Miss Evelia!”
Before the butler could finish, Evelia ran inside the estate. The old butler tried to stop her out of reflex, but their physical strength was far too different. There was no way someone like him could stop Evelia. All he could do was stand there and sigh helplessly as he watched her rush into the building.
Following the dreadful feeling in her heart, Evelia didn’t even glance at Armand’s office, she went straight to his bedroom. The moment she pushed open the door, she saw Armand lying silently on the bed, looking almost as if he were dead. Beside him sat Rachel, her face full of worry and frustration.
“…Ar…”
In that moment, Evelia’s throat tightened. She choked up and couldn’t even finish saying his name.
“...Armand… Mr. Armand…?”