Chapter 130
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Dear, I believe you may be misunderstanding.
Chapter 130
Grace rushed into her room immediately.
Though she had read through her mother's diary meticulously, she hadn't committed every single word to memory without error.
'Deathgrass, I definitely saw it. Definitely!'
It was a name written at the beginning of the diary.
It had stuck with me.
Because Rudiger... it was an anecdote about that suspicious man.
With urgency in her heart, Grace quickly pulled a book from her bag.
"No, this isn't it. The diary, the diary...!"
A thick leather-bound book, one of her mother's belongings, came into her hands first.
Grace reached deeper into the bag.
'Found it.'
Grace quickly read through the diary again.
Perhaps she was conscious that others might read the diary someday.
She had left pages scattered throughout that resembled secret documents, filled with cipher-like passages.
The page containing Deathgrass was one such coded entry.
Since childhood, she and her mother had playfully converted certain words into secret terms known only to them, and those words were written here.
Gigi was the secret pet name her mother used to call Grace.
The yellow box was the Royal Palace Library.
The scrambled alphabet here represented someone's name.
The method was to extract one letter from the end to the front in sequence, then flip everything back at the end.
And this R.
This was the designation for that man.
Grace took a deep breath and continued reading the diary.
[He gave me a faded, pale yellow plant fragment.
He said that when I returned home, Grace might fall ill, and instructed me to brew this and feed it to her.
'Remember this well. Steep it only once. She must consume only a single sip.'
True to his word, the moment we returned to the Mansion, Grace's fever raged.
When I brewed tea from the plant he had given me, her fever subsided immediately.
When it touched water, the plant released the scent of the sea.
I had to know what this was.
What exactly had that man made my young daughter consume?
I searched through every herb shop in the Capital, but no one knew of this plant.
For weeks, I made almost no progress.
Then, by chance, I met a certain nobleman at the Royal Palace Library.
The nobleman, who introduced himself as Hippy Grandel, scoffed at the plant book I was reading, claiming it was a forgery.
He boasted that his family had devoted centuries to studying plants alone.
He said the texts left by his ancestors remain required reading for scholars to this day.
On a whim, I showed him the plant fragment.
Remarkably, he recognized it immediately.
'Deathgrass! How on earth did you obtain this? It's nearly impossible to find these days...!'
'You know of it?'
'Of course I do. It is, true to its name, Deathgrass—the grass of death. It's known as a deadly poison. The toxin was so virulent that the kingdom eradicated it entirely some four hundred years ago. I always suspected some might have survived in the deep ocean, being a seaweed and all, but I never imagined I'd actually lay eyes on it like this.'
'Poison? Are you certain it's poison?'
'Ah! Please, do not worry yourself. Poison can also serve as medicine—if one knows the proper dosage, that is. This is actually an excellent fever reducer. Most people simply don't know it.'
At the word poison, my hands trembled violently, but I found some comfort in learning it was also an exceptional antipyretic.
Yet on the other hand, I felt afraid and deeply uneasy.
With my own hands, I had administered poison to my Grace.
Why had that man specifically prescribed this to lower Grace's fever?
There must have been countless other remedies.
If I had somehow given Grace even a fraction more, or if I had made any mistake...
Perhaps reading the fear in my expression, the talkative nobleman offered one more tale.
'My lord, I have an amusing story for you. There exists another plant, a sibling of sorts to Deathgrass. Long ago, a single seed split into two—one drifted to the sea, the other took root on land.'
'...Then, you're saying such a plant exists on land as well?'
'It's a nearly forgotten tale. It appears only in the first edition of a book left by my grandfather's grandfather. Yes, that's correct. Such a plant does exist on land. Similarly, it has nearly vanished by now, but... much like this Deathgrass, it may be growing somewhere unexpected.'
'Then is that plant also a deadly poison like this one?'
'That's precisely what I found amusing about it. Deathgrass and that plant are...]'
Grace closed the diary.
She sprang to her feet and rushed straight to Lucas.
"I think I might be able to save Giselle."
"What do you mean?"
"Come with me. Jayden, please bring us rain cloaks and horses."
'What is this...'
Jason, who had been tending to Giselle, stared at Grace and Lucas with bewildered eyes.
She had suddenly rushed about the room, then rushed back out again—why was she heading outside into this downpour?
Lucas studied his wife's desperate expression for a moment, then issued a command to Haem.
"Haem, prepare rain cloaks and horses at once."
"Yes? Ah, um... yes! Understood."
"Miss, where are you going? The rain is far too heavy—it's dangerous out there!"
"It's fine, it's just nearby. And Lucas will come with me. Won't you?"
"A needless question. If I had my way, I'd go myself and have you remain here... but looking at your face, I see that's not an option."
Lucas read the fierce determination blazing in Grace's eyes.
With a helpless smile, he pressed his lips to her forehead.
Sensing something unusual, Jason too rushed out, retrieving horses, rain cloaks, and items that could serve as light sources.
"Let's go. Quickly!"
Grace did not hesitate and ran.
The fierce rain lashed at her face.
For her, inexperienced with riding, Lucas held the reins and ran alongside the horse.
Fortunately, the island's horses were larger and more robust than those on the mainland, and it galloped valiantly bearing both of them.
"Where are we going?"
"To the very place where the General removed his clothes."
"Ah, there."
Nestled against his chest as I was, I could feel him smile faintly through his back.
He was surely remembering that single hour from earlier in the day.
Grace pretended not to notice her flushing cheeks and gripped the saddle ring more tightly.
Though I wore a raincoat, my legs and face were already drenched, and the rain lashing against my cheeks was fierce.
It stung and chilled. Yet I could not stop.
"There it is."
Lucas's eyes gleamed with an eerie light.
With the keen senses of a beast, he stopped at precisely the place she desired.
It was a night so dark that neither moon nor stars were visible.
Though the rain was gradually thinning, searching through the drooping, waterlogged grass and pitch-black trees was no simple task.
Grace paid no mind to her skirt becoming thoroughly soaked in mud as she examined the ground.
Her fingertips grew increasingly red as they searched through the muddy earth and wet grass.
'I must find it. It was definitely around here.'
Why couldn't I see it?
When I walked through here during the day, it was scattered everywhere....
Wiping her rain-streaked eyes, she widened her vision once more.
A plant akin to Deathgrass.
This plant originally grew near the sea before gradually spreading inland.
Then came a drought in some year that killed all the plants, and from that point, their numbers plummeted.
People starved by the drought tore them all up to eat, but everyone who consumed them fell ill with food poisoning.
Naturally, people burned them away entirely.
The Island had a sparse population and resources abundant enough to feed them all.
Enough so that they would not resort to plucking such trivial grass.
Perhaps due to the epithet "Witch's Island," people rarely ventured here, making them insensitive to rumors—a factor that helped.
It was precisely for this reason that the plants thought to have vanished could preserve their original form.
Grace finally discovered the plant she had been seeking.
With trembling hands, she carefully uprooted it and sprang to her feet.
"Lucas...!"
In that moment, she felt as though she had glimpsed something beyond the forest.
She snapped her head up again, but the golden hair she thought she had seen moments before was nowhere to be found.
As she glanced around, unsettled by the strange feeling, Lucas, who had been searching a step away, approached.
"Grace."
"Ah... Yes, Lucas! I found it. This is it!"
"What is this?"
Grace spoke with a face radiant with joy.
"Dragon's Horn! It's named for its resemblance to the horn of a sea monster."
A grass that has nearly vanished in the present day, growing near the sea.
One grows in the sea, the other takes root on land as grass.
Rarely known, yet it carries poison within.
'This is it. This has to be it.'
Grace, her hands trembling from the cold, picked up a stone from the scattered rocks around her.
Dragon's Claw was a hardy plant no larger than an adult's finger.
She brought the stone down upon it with all her strength.
The earthy, hardened shell cracked open, revealing a pale yellow cross-section.
Remarkably, the flesh inside had the consistency of seaweed, gelatinous and yielding.
[That's precisely what I found fascinating. Deathgrass and this plant neutralize each other's components. Both are toxic, yet each serves as the antidote to the other.]
Grace lifted the split Dragon's Claw with delight, holding it up for Lucas to see.
"With this, I should be able to save Giselle."
[Isn't it remarkable?]
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Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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