Chapter 82.
Chapter 82.
Having decided to follow the director, I observed him closely. It would be nice if I could uncover some information that would allow me to screw him over. Even if I couldn’t, it would also be good to check and see if there was a place where I could have a face-to-face meeting with him on his way home from work.
The director was walking through the back alley while tightly holding a document envelope, treating it like his prized possession. I was certain he left the office empty-handed, so where did he get that document envelope? Well, it was fine either way. Whether it contained classified documents or erotica was none of my business.
I felt that there was something odd as I stalked the director. We had already passed this place once before. Could he be lost? No, no matter how complicated the roads in the back alleys were, there was no way he could get lost unless he had a horrible sense of direction.
Come to think of it; there were other abnormalities with this situation. In the first place, why would Director Pelgrant be walking in the back alleys where gangsters would normally be roaming about?
Aside from that question, I wonder if he sensed any strange presence in this deserted back alley? As that thought popped into my head, the director suddenly threw the envelope that he was carrying over the wall.
Yet, the funny thing was that I couldn’t hear the envelope land, which meant someone on the other side of the wall received it. However, the director didn’t break his stride and continued walking, with no sounds from beyond the wall.
Rather than a fun discovery, would this instead turn out to be bothersome for me to find out? I had a bad feeling about this. After wavering between curiosity and not wanting to get involved, I decided to turn around. At times like this, it was better just to go home, wash your feet, and sleep.
Maybe I should halt my plan to mess with him on his way home. What shall I do instead? I’ll need to think about it.
* * *
Arriving at the district office early in the morning once again, I continued to work hard and listen to the director’s nagging. As I handled the documents, I wondered why I was still doing this. Since I was getting reprimanded even when I did my work, I thought about not working and just accepting the scolding.
However, if I didn’t work, it wouldn’t just end with being yelled at but would be reflected on the training evaluation. As such, I had no choice but to cry and accomplish the tasks forced onto me with my best effort.
Judging from Pelgrant’s words and actions, it didn’t seem like he would give me a good score. From the way he looked at me, his eyes seemed to advertise their owner’s intent to give me a failing grade.
For your information, if a trainee got just one failing grade during the probationary period, they had to start the training again from the beginning. After three days of probationary life, all I felt was that the director had a shitty personality. I assume he was giving me all this crap because of his twisted nature.
As I was swearing mentally with a smile on my face, the official sitting next to me grunted and glanced at me. It was a blunt signal ordering me to make some tea. Did he not have hands or feet? Still, it seemed he had some conscience left, albeit the size of an ant, as he did not ask me directly. Anyways, the trainees were the best.
I stood up with an amiable smile. At the same time, I heard Director Pelgrant’s voice say, "What are you doing instead of working?”
At this point, the nagging was almost at the level of spinal reflexes. I roughly evaded it with laughter and headed to the pantry. I closed the pantry door and took out enough cups to match the number of departmental staff.
"Ka-ak! Tweh!” I spat in one of the cups. My body was so healthy that the spit did not have any phlegm. For situations like this, it was a pity that I was born as a Crow.
Even though I wanted to make bubble tea for the first time in a while, I couldn’t get any phlegm to spit into the drink, so I had to settle with mixing my saliva in it.
While I was pouring the tea into the cups, I suddenly had a flash of inspiration, "Keuh, you are a genius!"
If there were no pheasants, then a chicken would do. I opened my pocket space and took out a hergamorphin root, a medicinal herb used to make magic reagents. This root had a sweet taste and was slightly toxic, causing stomach aches. When I was in the village, my sisters often used it as constipation medicine.
I extracted the juice from the hergamorphin root into an empty cup and poured tea into it. The stomachache that this caused wouldn’t happen immediately after consuming it anyway, so it’d be fine. I added the same amount that my little sister used to eat, just enough to cause the desired effects but not enough to kill someone.
I decided to give the cup with spit in it to the guy who asked me to make the tea, allotting the special tea to Director Pelgrant. I picked up the tray of tea and refreshments, leaving the pantry.
"Take it easy, everyone." I gave out the tea with my first sincere laugh in a while.
"Thanks."
"Thank you."
I handed out the tea one by one, making sure to give the person who ordered me to make tea the cup that I spit into.
"Enjoy."
"Haha, thank you,” the jerk laughed and drank the tea. Yes, drink it well.
I left my cup at my seat and smiled as I approached Director Pelgant, "Have a cup of tea, director."
The director didn’t even respond as he grabbed the cup while still looking at the documents on his desk. Come on, drink it! Feeling some strange tension, I watched as the cup slowly approached the director’s mouth. Hurry, hurry and drink! The time it took for the cup to go to the director’s mouth somehow felt stretched out.
As soon as I heard Director Pelgrant’s slurping, I had a strangely pleasant feeling.
"Mmm, sweet," the director said.
I smiled and said to the director’s unsavory face, "Next time, I’ll make it less sweet."
As I tried to turn around, the director made a strange noise and spat out something. "Uwak!"
A handful of dark red blood splattered and stained his desk. Immediately after, the director dropped the cup, and it fell to the floor.
What’s going on here? For a moment, I couldn’t grasp the situation and just stared blankly.
Clank!
The moment the cup fell to the floor and broke, I snapped out of it and realized the whole situation. Damn it; I’m f**ked!
"Priest! Call over a priest!" I shouted as I laid the director down on the floor.
"Kyaaaaak!
"What?!?"
Everyone panicked and shouted, but Flam ran out as soon as he saw the blood, throwing the documents he was holding.
"I’ll go call one!"
Damn, I’ll buy you a meal, Flam. Somehow, Flam was the only one who was cool-headed.
I formed water out of magic. Originally, this was supposed to be done with saline, but there was no way to get it right now. I quickly pushed the water into Director Pelgrant’s mouth. I had to wash out his stomach somehow.
"Oowuk!"
As I made him vomit everything out with the water I created, I tried to figure out the cause. Damn it, what happened? Hergamorphins’s effects did not include vomiting blood.
I scanned through the knowledge that was forcibly taught to me by Elder Mirpa, as he lacked a student to take after him in alchemy and medicine. There were no medicinal herbs or food that induced vomiting blood when combined with hergamorphins.
If the medicinal effect occurred too quickly and he defecated on the spot, I would have thought I used too much of it. However, as far as I knew, it didn’t have this effect of vomiting blood.
"Healing! Restoration!" I tried to maximize the director’s condition as much as possible when the stomach wash was done.
Damn, I wish there was magic to treat every poison like from the novel I read in my past life. Unfortunately, there was no such nonsense magic as far as I knew. Although divine power was able to produce similar results, unless it was performed by someone at the level of the saintess, it wouldn’t be perfect. In fact, I didn’t call for a priest for the purpose of detoxification but rather the divine power’s special ability. There was nothing as excellent as divine power for prolonging life.
The incident at the ball left me very curious, so I conducted a detailed investigation, which was how I was able to come to this decision. Rather than me providing small bits of vitality, a priest pouring divine power into him would increase his chances of survival much more. Of course, if the priest who was coming were unskilled, then things would be different.
I kept up the healing spell and dug through the director’s vomit with my bare hands. Based on the sound of vomiting accompanied by blood rather than coughing, I could tell that the blood came from the stomach and not the lungs. However, that realization wasn’t why I administered the stomach wash. Instead, I thought there was something wrong with what I had fed him.
As I washed his stomach, the amount of blood gushing out gradually began to decrease. Even so, for someone like me who didn’t know anything about modern medicine, there was no way to do any surgical operations. However, I was very up-to-date on this world’s herbal medicine, so I decided to figure out the problem from the things he kept throwing up.
I found a dissolved blade of grass in the director’s vomit, bringing it up to my nose and smelling it. The disgusting smell and aroma of gastric acid were mixed in, and the dark red blood made it hard to tell the color, but I was able to deduce that this was a poisonous plant called the horn. This time, I was surprised by my superhuman sense of smell.
I decided to leave the detoxification to luck. Making sure that no one could see, I secretly took out some hergamorphins and herbs from my pocket space. These would be used to detoxify the horn’s poison as I chewed them.
Hoping my hunch would be correct, I put the chewed herbs in the director’s mouth and used magic to put it into the director’s stomach. Then, I saw Flam rushing in with an old priest on his back.
My work was done. I would have to go in and out of the bathroom due to the hergamorphin juice left in my mouth, but I couldn’t help it. If anything went wrong, my civil servant career would be ruined.
* * *
Director Pelgrant was eventually taken to the hospital. He had yet to come to his senses, but they said his life was safe. In addition, I had to hear this news from a cold interrogation room.
The knight in front of me looked at me with cold eyes and asked, "Didn’t you poison him?"
No, I did feed him poison, but the poisonous herb I gave him was stomachache medicine, and it would only cause a stomachache for a day. It was understandable that they would suspect me since he threw up blood after drinking the tea I had made, but it still felt unfair. Moreover, the herb I fed him was a poison that would detoxify the horn’s poison.
"No, I didn’t,” I said.
"By the way, what’s that, whatchamacallit, morphine?"
"Hergamorphins. Morphine is an opium drug that comes from poppies."
This knight is saying some dangerous things. How dare he turn me into a drug dealer? That being said, there were poppies in my pocket space that were ingredients for morphine, and because they were made in Olympus, they were highly toxic and of high quality.
"Yes, that. You had it, that poison, the name which was whatchamacallit...”
"Horn?"
The knight clapped his hands as if it just popped into his head. "Yes! Didn’t you have that horn too?"
"No."
"What do you mean ‘no.’ You even know the name of the poison, but you still say it wasn’t you?” The knight pressed.
"I knew the name of the poisonous plant because I saw it in the vomit that came out from the stomach wash. Hergamorphin is an antidote to the horn, which is why I fed it to him,” I said.
"Uh-huh!"
I almost sighed in the pushy knight’s face. I was thinking about giving him a good smack when the door of the interrogation room opened, and a man came in.
"Salute!" The knight who was interrogating me stood up and saluted.
The saluted man glared at the knight and said, "Didn’t I tell you not to accuse him unilaterally?"
I guess the interrogation room wasn’t soundproofed at all.
The knight responsible for interrogating me was shocked speechless, while the recipient of the salute seemed to be a high-ranking knight.
The higher-ranking knight clicked his tongue as he ordered, "Get out."
"Yes?"
"I said get out."
The shocked knight quickly abandoned his interrogation and left with a frightened face at the sight of the other knight speaking in a low voice. I was disappointed that the knight’s life had just been extended, but I breathed a sigh of relief, wondering if someone capable of communicating had arrived.