Chapter 350: The Apothecary’s Challenge
Thud!
The sound of someone dropping to their knees was sharp and clear.
Bang!
The sound of a forehead hitting the ground echoed loudly.
Evelia knelt and bowed close to the second prince, completely silent except for her breathing.
After she knelt, Eric gently blew on his tea to cool it down. He brought the teacup to his lips several times, but never actually drank it.
“White Dove.”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
The man with glasses standing next to Evelia stepped forward and respectfully bowed toward the second prince.
His voice sounded lazy and relaxed, completely opposite of Evelia, who was tense and lying flat on the ground.
“Go prepare some fine tea from Lake Cup. My Red Crow hasn’t seen me in a long time. I’m sure he needs to catch up with me.”
“Understood. I’ll get it ready now.”
Although the man still spoke in a lazy tone, he looked completely different from earlier when he was pretending to be a salesman. His eyes, however, were locked onto Evelia, as if he was very interested in her.
After all, she had an alchemically modified body.
Although White Dove personally didn’t agree with alchemical modifications, as an apothecary, or researcher, he was still very interested in this kind of body transformation through alchemy. He always believed that even if you don’t like something, new things are still worth exploring.
To him, Evelia was a perfect subject for study. She was the only confirmed alchemically-modified person he had ever come across. Of course he was curious about her.
But his interest wasn’t only in Evelia. White Dove was also deeply intrigued by Armand.
He had heard before that Armand had some kind of strange illness. As a “doctor,” of course he was curious, and even a little excited, about diseases he had never encountered before.
He had tried to find a way to steal Armand’s medical records, but everything about Armand’s body was carefully hidden by the crown prince, making it impossible for him to get the information. But that secrecy only made White Dove even more interested.
So, when the time, place, and opportunity lined up perfectly, he used a kitten he had with him to secretly get a little bit of blood from this mysterious leader of the Royal Knights.
Once he had fresh blood, running tests became much easier. That also made it easier to figure out how to deal with Armand.
Of course, Eric had never given any order to kill Armand, his orders only involved Evelia. So White Dove’s actions against Armand were purely driven by curiosity, curiosity about the secrets hiding in Armand’s body.
But when he discovered that Armand’s blood was filled with alchemical toxins, and yet Armand was still alive and well, he realized Armand had extremely high resistance to poison.
At that moment, killing Armand became a personal challenge for White Dove.
Poisoning someone with such high poison resistance, wasn’t that an exciting challenge?
After being an apothecary for so many years, this was the first time he had ever heard of something, or someone, like this. How could he possibly let it go?
So, he started doing experiments. His first unfortunate test subject was that same kitten. As expected, it didn’t survive his “research.”
After that, he began analyzing all the components in Armand’s blood. Compared to Rachel, who had limited resources, White Dove, backed by the second prince, had a much easier time.
Although he still couldn’t develop a full antidote for Armand’s poison resistance, he did manage to find some “gaps”, specific toxins that could target Armand.
As for the method to deliver the poison, he chose something very simple, a fast-evaporating perfume.
Even though “Red Crow” was always difficult to find, the movements of Evelia, the personal maid of the Royal Knights’ leader, were much easier to track.
White Dove disguised himself as a high-end perfume salesman and sold the poisonous perfume to Anna.
This was where his skills as an apothecary really showed. Out of a bunch of poisonous materials to choose from, he picked the simplest one. That material was harmless to regular people, even if someone drank it by mistake, they might just get a stomachache at most.
But for Armand, when that poison came into contact with the toxic substances already in his blood, a dangerous chemical reaction would happen. It would make the poison in his body more active and his condition worse.
In a way, White Dove wasn’t really “poisoning” Armand. Even he couldn’t completely break through Armand’s special body. He just waited for Armand’s toxins to act up, and used a special trigger to make the poison already in his body much more powerful.
He even added a “hallucinogen” he had been working on recently. After carefully adjusting the ingredients, he made sure it would only affect Armand, and would barely affect anyone else.
If Rachel hadn’t discovered it in time, Armand might have really died one day. His heart stopping suddenly during some random, chaotic hallucination.
White Dove, of course, didn’t know that Armand had Rachel, the “genius alchemist,” by his side. He just thought it was strange that after so long, he still hadn’t heard any news about the death of the Royal Knights’ captain.
It wasn’t until today, when he met Evelia and caught a whiff of her scent, that he realized she wasn’t using that perfume anymore.
But White Dove wasn’t some brute who would force Evelia to keep using the perfume. From his point of view, part of the experiment had already succeeded. Even if she stopped using the perfume, the poison had already taken root inside Armand’s body.
No matter what anyone did now, it couldn’t stop his eventual death.
What White Dove wanted now was to study the real “antidote.” He wanted to figure out exactly what kind of poison was inside Armand, and how he managed to survive it. He wanted to understand Armand’s blood and whether its unique resistance to poison might be useful in the future.
After all, this kind of “poison that resists other poison” was something any apothecary would be deeply curious about.
Naturally, he was also curious about Evelia.
He wondered what her body was really made of, how her consciousness worked, and even imagined, if he fed that poison to Evelia, would she die just as quickly as those cats did?
To him, all of this was a necessary sacrifice for the progress of medicine and the future of humanity.
“.......”
Even though Evelia was still kneeling on the ground, she could feel White Dove’s unsettling gaze.
She lowered her head, avoiding eye contact with anyone. All she could hear was her own breathing, one breath at a time, in a room so quiet it was almost scary.
“Stand up, Red Crow.”
After White Dove left, the second prince finally spoke to Evelia again. She obeyed without protest and slowly stood up.
Her long pink hair had gotten messy after everything that had happened, and she looked exhausted and disheveled.
“Come. Sit.”
Eric motioned with his chin toward the seat in front of him, like someone calling over a puppy. Evelia didn’t dare disobey. She quietly sat across from him, just as he wished.
“Red Crow.”
The second prince spoke in a calm, casual tone. He adjusted the plate in front of him and began to cut his steak.
Because he had been trained in noble table manners, even when the silver knife touched the plate, it didn’t make much noise.
“Do you still remember who you are... and who you belong to?”
Clang!
This time, the moment he asked the question, Eric pressed hard on the knife, cutting off a small piece of meat.
The loud, harsh sound that came from the plate felt like a warning.