Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 55
Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 55
The herbs that had fallen to the ground were in worse condition than when first picked.
Moreover, perhaps because they had been buried among the clods of dirt, the amount she could salvage was noticeably less than what she had originally gathered.
‘What a waste…’
She felt she now understood what Lion Asteri had meant.
Hadn’t all her hard work gone to waste because she’d thrown a tantrum for nothing?
Freyania’s lips jutted out in a sulk.
“It’s no use picking them up again.”
Just as she was thinking that at this rate, they would all end up in the trash, let alone be used for alchemy…
Suddenly.
A perfectly shaped Aqua Rosemary appeared before her eyes.
“…!”
It was genuinely strange.
They were the same herbs, and she’d picked them the same way.
So how come the herbs Lion Asteri picked were so intact?
There were no crush marks from being handled, and no sap oozing out from being pressed by a blade.
“How in the world did you do that…?”
Freyania asked in formal speech again.
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know. What’s the secret?”
“You just pick them with care.”
“…”
What nonsense.
It sounded like someone claiming they aced a test just by studying the textbook.
Hadn’t Freyania given her very best for a whole week, too?
And it didn’t work!
‘He’s definitely lying.’
So you’re not going to tell me, is that it?
Freyania’s cheeks puffed up like a poison dart frog.
‘Maybe I really should just kidnap him.’
She hadn’t wanted to use dangerous methods since he was the eldest grandson of House Asteri, but this was a problem.
Alright. Wouldn’t it be fine to just snatch him away for a single month, extract everything she needed, and send him back?
She’d just need to give a signal to the subordinates she had stationed nearby in advance.
No, that won’t do either.
If she had Salamander spray a burst of gas to knock him out and then drag him off by the…
While these thoughts were racing through her mind.
“Here, come take a look.”
Lion Asteri had already moved a step ahead and was gesturing to her.
“…!”
Was he finally going to teach her properly?
He should have done that from the start!
She pulled her pointed hat down firmly and rushed over to look.
“This?”
It wasn’t an alchemy herb.
“Isn’t this… a cooking ingredient?”
“Look closely.”
Lion began to explain in a calm, low voice.
“You don’t need to pick up a hoe and start digging at an herb right away.”
His voice was so gentle that Freyania quickly became absorbed in the explanation.
“You have to figure out the plant’s texture first, and how it should be gathered.”
They were all different.
Mushrooms, leaves, roots, and fruits each had different properties:
whether they sprouted from the dirt or had to be dug up,
and whether they needed to be cut from a branch or pulled out.
Only by grasping these principles could you minimize the damage.
“…”
It wasn’t a story she was hearing for the first time.
It was just a story she had heard a very long time ago.
The same kind of story her mother, a mountain keeper, had told her.
The essence of things in the mountains—how you must not harm them carelessly.
It was a story from decades ago that she had unwittingly forgotten, and after moving to the Criminal Underworld, cut off from nature, she had erased it from her mind entirely.
Seeing a plant in its natural state in the Criminal Underworld was like trying to pluck a star from the sky.
Everything that appeared on the Black Market was already processed.
The weeds on the street were trampled under filth, while decorations inside homes sat in vases, making it impossible to tell without a book whether they grew from the ground or fell from the sky.
But…
standing here now, she felt as though she understood a little.
Not as knowledge, but with the same heart she’d had back then when she listened to her mother, the mountain keeper, explain things.
As she listened to the story with a strange, confusing feeling, Lion plucked one of the fruits he had been diligently explaining and popped it into his mouth.
The red fruit slipped in and burst with a pop, its refreshing scent immediately flooding her senses.
‘That looks delicious…’
Come to think of it, she hadn’t even had a snack in this forest today.
‘Maybe I’ll try one too.’
Freyania also reached out for a red fruit, plucked it, and was about to put it into her mouth…
Smack!
“Ah!”
“Don’t.”
Thumpity-roll-
A red fruit, riper and more perfect-looking than the one Lion had eaten, tumbled to the ground.
“Hey!”
So unfair! You ate one yourself!
“You have to look carefully before you eat.”
Before she could protest, Lion picked up the fallen fruit and started to explain.
“Look closely. The shape is a little different, isn’t it?”
“Now that you mention it…”
Indeed, the fruit in Lion’s hand and the one on the ground had subtly different stem shapes.
“You have to look carefully before you eat. Even if they’re in the same spot, they can be different fruits. Here, try this one.”
The attitude was a bit like he was dealing with a child…
Realizing it was faster to give in than to point this out, Freyania accepted and ate the fruit Lion gave her.
Pop!
It burst in her mouth just like a pomegranate, but the juice flowed out like a grape.
A taste that seemed to quench her thirst and satisfy her need for sugar all at once!
‘How does Lion Asteri know all of this?’
She was a half-elf, and even though she had lived far longer than Lion Asteri, there was a world of things she didn’t know.
What’s more, the difference between what she’d seen in books and what she encountered in reality was enormous.
Maybe because they came from nature, the shapes and textures were all different!
Freyania ate another mouthful of the fruit.
She’d had no idea this fruit had such a flavor!
The popping texture and the soft seeds within.
It seemed like it would make a very popular snack if preserved in sugar.
Why hadn’t anyone known about this?
It was probably because, like the mistake Freyania had nearly made, a similar-looking fruit was poisonous!
‘As expected of Lion Asteri. His eye for detail is remarkable.’
Maybe it really would be best to just kidnap him after all.
Nom.
Freyania kept eating the fruit as she hatched her sinister scheme.
“…”
And for his part, Lion simply kept handing the tiny half-elf more fruit and watching her in silence.
‘She eats a lot more than I thought?’
He’d only given it to her to taste.
It seemed to suit her palate more than he expected.
‘Was she starving?’
He hadn’t expected the person sending potions from the Criminal Underworld to be someone like this.
When he first saw the potions, he’d imagined a rather gloomy character, but seeing her in person, she seemed younger than he’d thought.
If he’d known, he would have put a ‘Good Job’ sticker on her score sheet or something.
‘Could she be getting exploited by force in the Criminal Underworld?’
No, seeing that she could come and go freely, that didn’t seem to be the case…
Hmm, he wasn’t sure. In any case, she didn’t look like someone he needed to be all that wary of.
Of course, Elvia had said, ‘No matter how easy a target they may seem, she is from the Criminal Underworld, so you must not let your guard down,’ but…
Glance.
To Lion, she looked to be full of openings.
Just a moment ago, if he hadn’t stopped her, she would have eaten a fruit that caused stomachaches and diarrhea and collapsed.
“As I thought…”
“…?”
“This just won’t do.”
Having finally devoured every fruit in the vicinity, Freyania wiped the juice from her lips with the back of her hand and made a firm resolution.
‘Let’s kidnap him.’
No more, no less, just one month!
She would invite him as a guest of honor in the Criminal Underworld and provide him with an environment as luxurious as House Asteri—wouldn’t that suffice!
“Lion Asteri!”
Freyania thrust her index finger toward Lion.
“You, become my teacher…”
At the same time, just as she was about to summon Salamander.
“That would be difficult.”
A chilling voice came from the darkness…
And Freyania’s body vanished without a trace.
Thud-
Only the hoe and basket Freyania had been holding were left clumsily on the ground.
“Oh dear!”
Seeing this, Lion calmly expressed his dismay.
There was a local legend in Mimir Forest that the Witch dragged away anyone who harbored wicked thoughts.
A legend that had just been invented.
In any case, he didn’t know the details, but it seemed the half-elf had ultimately harbored some impious intentions.
“Shall I head back early today, then.”
Lion gathered the ownerless basket and hoe and left the forest.
He figured Elvia would let him know the result once the matter was settled.
It wasn’t as if they’d kill her, right?
* * *
House Asteri’s underground detention chamber.
“…Should we kill her?”
“Killing her immediately is out of the question.”
As the voices of a man and a woman reached her, Freyania snapped awake from her slumber.
‘What in the world is going on?’
Freyania couldn’t understand what had just happened.
She had clearly just resolved to kidnap Lion Asteri, and then, in the blink of an eye, her vision had gone dark and she’d fallen into a deep sleep.
When she opened her eyes again, the location had changed, and now she was sitting in a chair, her entire body restrained… and she was surrounded by some people, wasn’t she?
Freyania instinctively suppressed a scream and darted her eyes around.
A pair of gray eyes shining through the darkness… and a chilling pair of purple demonic eyes entered her view.
‘Ah.’
She could tell instinctively.
The heir of House Asteri.
Rickshel Asteri.
It had been his doing.
Gulp!
So the story about the brothers having a good relationship wasn’t a bluff, it was true…
‘That’s impossible!’
It was impossible by common sense for noble siblings to get along.
Even in ordinary noble families, it was an everyday occurrence for them to try and kill each other over the succession, wasn’t it?
And this was the prestigious mage family of House Asteri, no less.
Even if she conceded a hundred times that they hadn’t killed each other yet due to the influence of the Archmage Petrick Asteri, there was no need for them to be on such good terms that they would deal with an enemy for each other like this.
‘S-still, there’s a way out of this.’
The heir, Rickshel Asteri, and the female mage of unknown power level who seemed to be his confidant.
These two alone were a huge problem, but the real threat hadn’t appeared yet.
That was Petrick Asteri.
The head of this family.
If he showed up in person, she would surely meet a swift and silent gruesome death here.
So before that, she had to prove her innocence as much as possible.
Right. There was no plan to kidnap him anyway!
Even if she had thought about kidnapping him, she should say it wasn’t the kind of brutal abduction they were imagining, but rather an intention to serve him as a teacher!
And luckily, in this misfortune, hadn’t she never actually voiced the words to kidnap him for real?!
Right. They say that even when the sky falls, there’s always a hole to escape through!
“Um, excuse me! I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”
Freyania spoke in the most delicate and amiable voice she could manage.
“You’re awake.”
“More importantly, a misunderstanding?”
“As I thought. Should we just kill her?”
They weren’t listening to her.
In that case, she just had to keep saying what she needed to say.
“I was simply so envious and amazed by Sir Lion Asteri’s talent that I intended to serve him as my teacher…”
“Someone who intended to serve him as a teacher hiding trusted subordinates outside the forest doesn’t add up.”
“Th-that was just in case of an emergency, I really didn’t intend to…!”
Of course she had.
She had planned to kidnap him outright, lock him up in the nicest place in the Criminal Underworld, and make him do nothing but alchemy.
But she hadn’t ended up doing it, had she?
As she was making this excuse even to herself.
-You even hid subordinates, did you?
The lights in the underground chamber flickered on, and with a surge of majestic magic power, a figure appeared.