That's Why She's Obsessed #5
"Ghk—?!"
Blood tore from my throat as I hit the dirt and rolled. My clothes scraped filthy against the ground while the pain lancing through my whole body only grew worse by the second. Left alone, this wound would never heal on its own. It was fatal.
Even as my face burned crimson with fever and I crawled across the floor, I forced my arm out and smashed the frying pan's handle as hard as I could. The pan lost the fight with a clatter and skittered across the ground, dumping its cookies into the dirt along with it.
I did it so Helena could never eat them.
"Ghh… ghhh…!"
So this was what they meant by poisoning symptoms. I understood it on pure instinct. Not loyalty, not Valona, not some clever gambit—just the effect of the Steel Mental I'd begged from Hypnos.
An intervenor could request a few perks so long as they didn't cross the lines the gods had drawn. Steel Mental was one of them, and its effect was so modest that no one raised a fuss. That was why I also asked for a body tough enough that I wouldn't die easily. That was Zombie Body.
An unshakable mind and an unkillable body. I had judged both absolutely necessary for dealing with broken women—yet now those blessings were saving me from a direction I never expected.
With this much potency, even a slight delay in treatment meant death. But because I had a body that refused to die from poison, only the pain scaled to death remained. Not dying didn't mean I couldn't feel agony. No—right now, not being able to die was a demerit. If my breath had simply stopped, it would have been merciful. Instead I was drowning in a pit of suffering I never needed to endure.
I could feel my insides collapsing and regenerating in vivid detail. Nausea surged.
"Ugh… uuugh…!"
I'd heard that humans black out when pain exceeds their limit. Maybe that was why. The last thing I registered was the bloody red foam forcing its way up my throat—then my eyes closed. The pain had simply been too much.
"Haaah…"
Exhausting. Helena felt the fatigue of the spirit rather than the body reach its peak as she carried a tray of food toward the tent. She felt sorry for Zion, but she planned to lean on the boy and bleed off some of that weariness. Bringing meals for two was part of the plan.
To Helena, who could not even rely on her own family, Zion was a spiritual parent in every sense that mattered. Because of that child she had endured this far, and she was slowly getting better. It was living proof that everyone needed a place to catch their breath.
"Zion~. I'm back. It's lunchtime—eat with me…"
But the moment she stepped into the tent with that light complaint on her lips, Helena's arms went slack. The tray in her hands crashed to the floor; the bowl of stew shattered with a violent clatter and spilled its contents everywhere.
"Zi… Zi…"
The stew splashed across her trousers and boots. She had no room to care. Hands shaking violently, Helena staggered toward the fallen child.
A small boy in servant's clothes lay collapsed on the ground. Bloody foam bubbled at his mouth; even now he twitched like a dying fish. There was no question who it was. Zion Altram.
"Zion!!"
Even a glance told her this was no simple collapse from fatigue. Helena screamed, and the mana that had been sleeping inside her body erupted, sweeping the entire tent in a storm.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
A massive scream rolled across the whole training ground; mana was running wild on top of it. Naturally the ordinary soldiers doing chores, and even the knights who could handle mana, all sensed that something had gone terribly wrong and reached for their swords.
"Everyone else hold position! Only my squad follows me!"
The man who served as representative of the dispatched knight order and its vice-commander—Randal—sent his sweat-soaked blond hair flying as he raced straight into the eye of the storm. Five men pounded after him.
"Ah… ahhh…!"
The eye of that storm was Helena's tent—the very place every member of the knight order both yearned for and respected, the woman's private sleeping quarters. Even though she could have come and gone from the Krauser mansion without anyone complaining, she had chosen to share their rough lodgings; it was the symbol of her gentle heart.
Now that tent lay in shredded rags scattered through the forest. Odds and ends and the field cot tumbled across the ground. And in the middle of that devastation, Helena clutched a single child and trembled.
"Lady Helena?! What happened?!"
Even when Randal approached as the group's representative, she gave no sign of turning. It looked almost like she was ignoring them, but Randal knew Helena was not that kind of person. So he focused on grasping the situation.
"This is…!"
And so he saw it: the small child cradled in Helena's arms, foaming blood, collapsed. Zion.
"You two—ride as messengers to the Krauser and Altram main houses! The rest of you comb the duchy for any mage or apothecary who can use healing magic and bring them to the ducal residence! His life is hanging by a thread right now! Anyone free, prepare a carriage and park it in front of the knight barracks! Move!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
Randal snapped out rapid orders and scattered his subordinate knights. This was clearly not a slow-acting cumulative poison; someone had used an immediate, decisive toxin. And of all times, during outdoor training.
"Lady Helena! Please calm yourself first. We must get that child to the Krauser main house as quickly as possible."
He urged her toward the Krauser mansion rather than Altram's, forcibly pulling the still-trembling Helena to her feet. It was a calculation to raise the boy's survival odds by taking him to the wealthier, better-equipped ducal house. He already knew the fallen child belonged to the Altram household; that did not mean he was giving special treatment because of noble blood. It was simply a pure, desperate scramble to save a dying boy. Randal himself was a count's son—he had no need to flatter a viscount's house.
"Zi… Zion…"
Helena seemed to understand that sincerity; she quietly accepted Randal's support and began to walk. She clung desperately to the faint scraps of reason that had returned. If she collapsed again, she felt she would never see Zion a second time.
"He'll be all right. Young as he is, he's still a son of House Altram—he's trained his body and handled mana. His resistance should be far higher than an ordinary child's."
"Y-yes…"
Even Randal's carefully offered comfort never reached Helena's heart. Right now her eyes and mind held nothing but Zion Altram; there was not the slightest crack for anything else to slip through. The only way to restore her reason was to heal Zion Altram.
"Heavens above…!"
Late at night. Looking down at the child sleeping soundly on the bed, the elderly man let out a sigh of pure wonder. He had only just rushed over with the tools he needed after hearing a noble child was critical—yet the moment treatment ended, the boy's breathing had already settled into a steady rhythm.
"Elder, how is he?"
Chess, who had been watching quietly, asked in a trembling voice. The face lit by the wavering candlelight was thick with anxiety.
"This is… truly remarkable. The emergency measures taken at the ducal house certainly helped, but more than that, the boy's vitality is extraordinarily strong. Just holding on to his breath this long already makes him incredibly tough—tough indeed."
"Then Zion will be all right?"
"Yes. The poison has left him weakened, of course, but with proper convalescence he will recover. The toxin was powerful, yet fortunately not complex."
Only after hearing those words could Chess finally press a hand to his chest and feel relief. The old man was only a neighborhood-level mage when it came to magic, yet the duke himself had entrusted him with outstanding pharmacological knowledge; he was famous across the territory as a healer. When a man like that guaranteed safety, the way Chess's expression crumbled with relief was only natural.
"Thank you. Truly, thank you."
"Hoho. To think a man like Chess Altram would behave so freely—I'm surprised. I suppose worry for one's child is the same for everyone."
The old man sparkled with amusement as he watched the man who still clutched his hand. He seemed to like the un-noble simplicity of it.
"Ahem! Forgive my discourtesy…"
Chess hurriedly released the elder and cleared his throat in embarrassment. He was ashamed of how unguarded he had become in his excitement.
"Hoho. Think nothing of it. Anyone would. At any rate, he should wake in a few days, so try not to worry too much and get some rest yourself. The head of the house must stay solid, or new illnesses will start appearing."
"Yes. Thank you for your consideration."
"Then I shall take my leave as well. I'll stop by again tomorrow."
When the elder rose to leave, Chess naturally supported him and walked him out of the mansion. A man respected even by Duke Krauser for his pharmacological knowledge could not be treated lightly by Chess, who served that same duke. Not that he had ever intended to.
"Haaah."
After seeing the old man into his carriage, Chess went straight to Helena's room and delivered the glad news. Seeing the woman slumped lifelessly at the corner of the bed made his own heart ache—yet when she soon gathered herself and stood, he smiled with genuine emotion.
"Is he truly all right?!"
"Yes. He's sleeping now, but they said he will wake in a few days. The poison has been neutralized as well."
"Ah…!"
In his heart Chess wanted to go in with her. In the end he let Helena enter alone. He judged that she needed time to settle her mind by herself.
"Zion…"
Helena stepped alone into the room where Zion slept and murmured the child's name in a low voice. Drawing closer to check, she found no sign of suffering on his face. His breathing was even and steady—utterly different from the state she had seen that afternoon.
"I'm so… so glad."
She tightly clasped Zion's small hand and bowed her head again and again in prayer—gratitude offered to everyone who had fought to save this little boy. Even now, remembering the child on the brink of death made her own hands and feet shake; how much worse it must have been for them.
But they had passed that crisis completely. Because of that, Helena finally had the composure to think about what came next. Yet it was not only composure.
Rage. A fierce, blazing rage she had never felt once in her life was burning through Helena's heart.
"I won't… forgive this."
Because she finally had room to think, Helena ground her teeth until they creaked. Her eyes were deep and sinister enough to hold an abyss. The killing intent rising endlessly was not aimed at herself—it was for the culprit who had reduced Zion to this state.
The murderous aura blending with the darkness of night was almost artistic. Anyone who didn't know the circumstances might choke on a startled breath. Zion was sleeping too deeply to notice, but if he hadn't just escaped the poison, he would have sensed it long ago.
Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Unforgivable.
No—I will not forgive.
Helena swore she would punish the culprit with her own hands, and with those chilling eyes she quietly looked down at the sleeping boy's face.