Chapter 227: 41st Floor: Raising Prince Shota
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 227: 41st Floor: Raising Prince Shota
“It’s poison.”
Only four people live in this detached palace.
Me, Shota, Layla, and the handmaiden.
It was impossible not to know who the culprit was.
The handmaiden, who had been standing beside us, feigning politeness while watching our meal with shifty eyes!
Just look at her face. The moment our eyes met, her pupils widened in a panicked expression.
Following my gaze, Layla and Shota also turned to look at her.
“Kh— N-No!! It’s a scheme by that woman, that mercenary! My lady! You know how diligently I’ve worked all this time. It’s her, it’s her plot! She’s trying to frame me, your only loyal servant, to deceive you!”
It was a flimsy excuse, one that anyone could see was born of panic. She didn’t seem like a real assassin, more like someone bought off with money. That’s how easy they must have thought dealing with Prince Shota would be.
Of course, if it hadn’t been for me, they would have succeeded with ease.
“Is summary execution possible?”
I immediately stood up, summoned my spear, and rushed forward, aiming it at her neck.
“Hiek!! M-My lady!”
Even if he was an abandoned royal, wasn’t an attempt on a royal’s life grounds for immediate execution?
When I looked at Layla, her expression was fraught with thought.
“Haa… Just a moment. Let’s confirm the facts first. Hella… she’s a girl who has worked in our palace for five years.”
Layla seemed to trust me already, but she stepped in to mediate, just in case.
It must have been a great shock for her to see a handmaiden of five years betray her right before her eyes. But at the same time, she knew such things were commonplace in the imperial palace.
“First, let’s get this straight. Is it really poison? What kind is it?”
Layla, having calmed down a little, took a deep breath and asked me.
“This bitch would know. Hey, hurry up and tell us what kind of poison it is.”
I pressed the spear to her neck as if to stab her. In fact, I pricked her just enough to draw a bit of blood.
“Kkgh! I-I don’t know… I-I don’t know anything like that!!!”
You don’t know anything like that, huh?
“This… is an admission, isn’t it?”
Even I could figure this out.
Of course she wouldn’t know what kind of poison it was if she was just given it to mix into the food. But didn’t that mean she was admitting to putting the poison in herself?
Just as I thought, she confessed right away.
Hella’s assassination attempt was one of the easier parts of the trial. Of course, it was only easy because I knew about it beforehand. She was the type who could turn the tables on you if you carelessly accused her of being a spy.
“Hella… why did you do it? Haa…”
Even Layla was sharp enough to understand.
Even without concrete evidence, there were non-verbal cues. Her expression, the trembling of her eyes, the way she habitually stuttered when she lied, and her strange behavior over the past few days—all these circumstances combined to confirm she was the culprit.
Betrayal. A hint of anger. And a look of helplessness, realizing that if I hadn’t been here, Shota would have just died in vain.
“Ah, ahh… I, I…”
Hella collapsed to the floor.
I grabbed a nearby cloth to gag her, then stripped off her outer shirt and bound her arms behind her back.
“Ugh, mmph!!”
As if finally grasping reality, she struggled and resisted, but I lightly chopped the back of her neck and knocked her out.
Stage one, clear.
“For now, I’ll lock her up and interrogate her slowly. As for a new employee… for the time being… no, it would be better not to hire anyone until we depart.”
“I understand… I’ll manage on my own for now.”
Killing this bitch here would only raise the Second Prince’s guard. If I kept killing the handmaidens sent as spies, they would eventually send real assassins.
I was confident I could block them all, but there was no need to increase the potential risk. I felt a little sorry for Layla, but simply buying time was the best option.
Our departure was in about five days.
Since it was officially a visit from a diplomatic delegation, they said it would take some time.
“……”
Having lost her appetite, Layla stood up from her seat.
“Th-Thank you…”
The prince looked at me and bowed his head in gratitude.
“Heh, this kid…”
Though it was a bit disrespectful to a prince, I found it endearing and patted his head.
The prince’s cheeks turned slightly red.
* * *
A short while later, I returned after securely tying up the handmaiden in the storage shed.
There was no need to torture her for information.
Without her even knowing it, I already had every piece of information on her, from the athlete’s foot on her little toe to the number of underwear she owned at home.
How many people had raged over failing the 41st Floor trial because of this bitch? Naturally, her personal details were meticulously recorded in a document spanning dozens of pages at the Awakener Association.
No need for me to find out myself.
I just skimmed the chat messages copy-pasted by the viewers and committed the gist of it to memory before coming out.
The prince returned to his room.
With the handmaiden gone, the already desolate palace felt even emptier. But there was a sound that broke the silence…
“One!! Two!!!”
It was the sound of the Imperial Knights training, coming from outside the window.
It was a sound that made me realize anew just how terrible the location of this palace was. Where in the world would you find a training ground right next to a royal villa?
The Empress had spitefully installed a sound-dampening magic circle only in Layla’s room, just enough so it wouldn’t get on the Emperor’s nerves.
The noise pollution should have been annoying, but Shota was watching the scene with his small eyes sparkling.
A look of admiration.
He, who could barely walk properly, stared endlessly at the knights outside.
A healthy body.
Strong legs that could go anywhere freely.
A healthy, masculine appearance and physique.
The great strength to protect someone.
Shota watched the knights outside with a look of pure longing.
Perfect.
And the timing was perfect for me, too.
To awaken his mana, he needed to trust me completely and entrust his body to me.
I had been wondering how to persuade him of this after only knowing him for a day, but this would make it much easier.
I moved up close behind the prince.
So close that we could feel each other’s body heat and scent. I felt him flinch.
“Your Highness, do you want to be healthy like them?”
“Huh? N-No…”
He seemed embarrassed by something, tearing his eyes away from the knights and lowering his head.
“You can be honest. You see, I can heal you.”
A bewitching, snake-like voice slithered into the prince’s ear.
“I-Is that true…?”
The prince’s eyes lifted with hope, then fell again as if he’d thought it over and become disappointed in himself.
He was a smart prince, in his own way. Countless priests and doctors had come and gone, unable to cure him. So he wasn’t getting his hopes up for me either.
However,
From behind, I rested my chest on his head and placed a hand on his chest as I spoke. It was an unreservedly intimate touch, but the prince, who was already acquainted with the feel of my breasts, couldn’t bring himself to refuse and merely blushed.
“Your Highness, I can do it. Will you trust me, just this once?”
Blood rushed to the prince’s lower body, preventing him from thinking straight.
The desire to be strong like everyone else, and the large, comforting weight of the pretty older sister(?) he could feel on his head.
His mind was saying, ‘I’ll just be disappointed again. How could a mere mercenary cure a curse that even the high priest couldn’t? This has to be a scam.’
“Yes… I’ll trust you…”
But his body reacted honestly.
Easier than I thought… Is this what they call a honey trap?
There was a reason I was being so careful and persuasive.
Last night.
While he was sleeping, rubbing his erect little penis, I had scanned his entire body with a minuscule amount of divine power so as not to provoke the demonic energy within him.
His curse was more severe than I’d expected.
His mana pathways were all blocked by the curse’s aftereffects, and the cursed seal that had been carved on his heart was now completely fused with it. Perhaps because he was born with the curse, unlike the Emperor, it was thoroughly attached to his physical body.
Just dispelling it is impossible.
In the first place, I didn’t even have a curse-dispelling skill.
But it was possible.
The act of dispelling a curse is similar to opening a door.
The more powerful the curse, the thicker and sturdier the door, equipped with multiple security devices.
The normal way to dispel it would be to pick the locks with precise skill.
But picking the lock isn't the only way to open a door.
You can just smash it down with overwhelming force.
Purification. With this skill’s mechanism, I can definitely dispel it.
But a problem arises here. The door is extremely sturdy because it’s the curse of an evil god.
If I were to mindlessly pour divine power into breaking the curse, I estimated it would consume at least 10,000 divine power.
Ten thousand divine power.
It was only because Lee Do-hee’s divine power stat was so broken that it seemed manageable; this amount of divine power was more than enough to cast high-level magic that could turn the entire empire to ash.
My control and agility stats were insufficient to perfectly control that much divine power. The entire imperial capital would probably be bathed in a pink glow as if a divine revelation had descended, and the night would become as bright as day.
I’d have to try it to know for sure, but whatever happened, it would be a total mess. The gods of this world might intervene, and I had no idea how the religious fanatics or the Emperor might overreact.
And that wasn’t the only problem.
Would Shota survive?
Even if the spell was meant to only dispel the curse, if I poured 10,000 divine power into him, he would definitely be affected by that dense energy.
Back on the 35th floor, when I released all my divine power and declared, “I’ll show you the world of a god!!”, the religious followers exposed to the dense divine power all fainted, and the weaker ones even died.
Could Shota possibly withstand such immense energy?
Naturally, there was a very high probability that a mission failure system message would pop up.
So, first, I’ll awaken his mana.
After that, whether I feed him breast milk or we have sex…
No, sex is a bit…
Anyway, if I strengthen his body to some extent, I can dispel the curse without any side effects.
As for prying eyes, I could do it later inside the carriage heading to the kingdom, in the middle of some deserted mountains. That should minimize the fallout.
“First, you have to trust me completely. Understand? Even if it hurts a little, you can’t move too much.”
“Yeees…”
Before I knew it, Prince Shota was lying face down on the bed.
I climbed on top of him.
First, I’ll restore the mana pathways damaged by the curse.
Instead of dispelling the curse, I would first repair the damage it had caused, then awaken his mana.
The method was similar to what I had received from the Abbot and the Heavenly Demon.
“I’ll be… taking off your clothes.”
“Huh? Ah, aaah…!”
Shhhk… Shhhk!
In case he tried to say something, I immediately stripped off his shirt and pants, right down to his underwear.
Suddenly naked, Prince Shota seemed extremely embarrassed, covering his face with both hands.
“I’m going to concentrate. It’ll be a big problem if you move!”
“Y-Yes!”
There was no need to connect our genitals. It would be more efficient if I had a dick, but this was simply an act of restoring the damaged parts of his existing mana pathways with my divine power.
Wooooong…!!!
I placed my hands on his back and injected divine power.
The curse repelled the divine power, and Prince Shota’s body began to tremble violently. Despite the excruciating pain of his insides being torn apart, Shota clenched his teeth and endured.
First, I’ll suppress the rampaging demonic energy.
The divine power and demonic energy clashed inside Shota’s body.
His body was repeatedly torn apart and healed.
“Kkgh…”
He bit his lip, drawing blood. The veins in his eyes stood out.
But I healed even that with my healing magic.
“Just hold on a little longer!!”
Maybe I should have just knocked him out first.
The pain seemed to be greater than I expected.
This was my first time doing something like this, so I had vaguely planned to just heal everything as I went.
Anyway, since I’d already started, it was too awkward to stop. I had to keep going!
“This is just the beginning!”
I had suppressed the demonic energy rampaging throughout his body. Now, it was time to cleanly erase the blockages clinging to his mana pathways.
I had to go slowly. If he died of shock, nothing could be more anticlimactic.
His heart is essentially the host of the curse. It’s impossible to deal with before dispelling it. I’ll secure the mana pathways first.
The map of human mana pathways was already perfectly ingrained in my mind. I would open a path that could circulate mana without passing through the heart.
Zzzzzzt…
Each time a mana pathway was slowly cleared by the divine power, Prince Shota would flinch. Especially his lower half…
Is he enjoying this somehow?
He was already fully erect, rubbing his small cock against the bed, but I focused on the treatment. Now that I had suppressed all the demonic energy, a little flinching like this wasn't dangerous.
Normally in this world, gathering mana in the heart was the standard method, but his heart was deeply cursed.
In that case, I’ll just go for the lower mana core.
The place where martial artists in Murim stories were said to gather their internal energy.
It might cause some problems when learning this world’s swordsmanship and mana cultivation methods, but he had to be alive to worry about that.
Time continued to pass.
I slowly cleared all his mana pathways and created a structure that would allow mana to circulate in his lower mana core.
Since it was my first time doing this, I sometimes failed and had to backtrack, or went down the wrong path, but I immediately healed everything each time, so no major incidents occurred.
“Ugh, hngh… uung!!”
Shota kept making strange noises, but all my attention was focused on controlling my divine power.
And finally…
“Haa, it’s all done, Your Highness.”
“Ah… is it over?”
His tone sounded somewhat disappointed.
Was it a similar feeling to getting your ears cleaned?
He was too embarrassed to get up because of his full erection, so I dressed him myself as if he were a baby.
“W-Wait… ugh!”
“There, there, hold still. Up we go~”
Snap!
I pulled his underwear up with a satisfying snap, then put on his shirt and pants.
“Kkgh…”
He was quite embarrassed by the baby treatment, but he seemed to be in a good mood, as his erection hadn’t subsided yet.
Hmm… well, I do have to feed him breast milk anyway…? Come to think of it, his mana awakening… it’s already done?
He may be the pathetic prince, but he had still inherited the Emperor’s talent. Without me doing anything else, mana was already gathering in his core.
The moment a space was made for mana to gather, he had awakened it.
“Your Highness? Um…”
This is a little embarrassing for me, too.
To think the day would come when I’d be breastfeeding a boy…
Right, this is all for the sake of climbing the Tower…
After a very simple rationalization, I started taking off the prince’s clothes again.
“Heh? W-Why…”
“Your Highness? Um, uh… sh-should I… help you finish…?”
I had tried to sound like a cool, confident woman, but I found myself getting flustered for some reason.