Chapter 02
“The lord said that any dish made with this tastes like heaven. No matter how much you complain about the fishy smell or anything else, do you really think the lord, who can’t forget this flavor, will take your side……?”
“So you were the thief.”
Luciela muttered under her breath.
“What?”
“That belongs to me. To me and my mother.”
Luciela pointed at the bottle Nigel was shaking.
“Do you know how carefully I had to measure the ingredient ratios to make a single bottle of that powder? I tasted it down to the decimal point, so much that my tongue nearly went numb.”
“W-What?”
They say it’s darkest beneath the lamp. And it really was.
“What about the diary? Hand that over, too.”
“……”
Nigel’s eyes darted around for a moment, seemingly caught off guard.
However, after a few seconds, he seemed to realize something, and a nasty smile spread across his lips.
“Hmmm…… So that blonde-haired librarian who suddenly disappeared was your mother? Now that I look at you, I can see the resemblance around your eyes.”
As though deliberately provoking Luciela, who was glaring at him, he slowly pulled out an old notebook from inside his clothes.
A worn brown cover, with a leather strap wrapped tightly around it to keep the book closed.
It was unmistakably her mother’s belongings.
“But I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was written in this.”
Pretending not to have heard her, Nigel chuckled and flipped through the pages.
Of course you couldn’t understand it.
The writing inside wasn’t in the Empire’s common language. It was Korean, the language of the world her mother had originally belonged to.
There were only two people in the Empire who could decipher those letters.
Luciela’s mother and Luciela herself, who had learned everything from her.
“I was thinking of throwing it away, but you need it that badly?”
Nigel waved the diary around with a smug expression.
“Then beg for it. No, wait.”
He stroked his chin.
“Swear that you’ll work like a dog for another three years, just like I said earlier. Otherwise, I’ll burn this useless bundle of paper right now…… What? Are you laughing?”
He stared at the corners of Luciela’s mouth, which had curled upward slightly, with a puzzled expression.
“Of course. Now I can finally leave this place without a single regret.”
And she meant it.
Luciela no longer had any reason to hold back.
That pig-like face of his.
That infuriating way of speaking.
That filthy, smug grin telling her to work as an unpaid employee for even longer.
She gathered every last bit of magical power she had, most of it already spent on the Tornado Potatoes.
Then she snatched up the poisonous scorpionfish’s spiny scales that she had prepared earlier that morning and that were scattered across the kitchen floor.
“Hey, what are you doing? What are you planning to…… Wait, you can use magic?”
“Of course. Whose daughter do you think I am?”
In reality, she could only use a tiny amount of magic, but Luciela decided to scare Nigel as much as possible.
A faint blue glow flickered at her fingertips.
She used magic to set the direction, put all her strength into her body, and hurled the spiny scale.
THUD!
The scale flew through the air at tremendous speed and lodged itself precisely in Nigel’s forehead.
As the poisonous scale pierced his forehead, cheek, and chin, his face instantly turned a bluish-purple color.
“Ugh?”
He let out a short scream before collapsing onto the kitchen floor with a heavy THUMP, unconscious.
Luciela gasped for breath.
Now her physical strength was exhausted, along with her magical power.
Staggering over to Nigel, she picked up the bottle of MSG and her mother’s diary from the floor and tucked them into her clothes.
“……Ah.”
As she began to walk away, she suddenly remembered something and turned around.
Then she carefully removed the pouch of gold coins hanging from Nigel’s waist.
“You follow the law when you have the luxury to do so. If you see something you need to survive, just take it.”
“Wouldn’t that make me a criminal?”
“My dear, I’m sorry, but your mother is already a wanted criminal. And yet, here I am, living well with such a lovely daughter.”
That was how my mother taught me.
My mother, who had once had the highest bounty in the Empire placed on her head.
Luciela gathered the pouch and her belongings, then walked away.
“Is it up ahead, Lucan?”
A man in his mid-twenties, dressed in blue, dismounted his horse and looked toward the lord’s castle.
He was a handsome young man with neat features and thick black hair slicked back cleanly.
“Yes, my lord. This is Lord Nor’s Castle.”
The tall guard following behind him dismounted as well and answered.
The black-haired man, Cain Vellaon, narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the castle walls.
“Could it be there……?”
He muttered under his breath.
For a brief moment, his throat bobbed instinctively.
She might be here.
The person who had saved him when he was on the verge of death ten years ago.
The miraculous taste he had experienced a decade earlier flashed through his mind once more.
“Let’s hurry and go…….”
“Yes, Baron…… Huh?”
The two men stopped walking simultaneously as they headed toward the lord’s castle.
The massive iron gate guarding the castle creaked open on its own.
And from within, a small foot stepped out.
“Who……?”
A woman?
No, it was a young girl who didn’t even appear to be fifteen years old.
Cain narrowed his eyes again and examined the girl closely.
Her blonde hair was tangled, as though she hadn’t washed it in days.
Her apron was covered in flour and various sauces.
Her hands were swollen and bluish-purple, looking as though they might even be bleeding.
In those hands, she held something that appeared to be a potato, oddly cut and threaded onto a skewer.
Her clothes and shoes were worn out.
In short, she looked absolutely filthy.
Cain had first experienced the “Taste of Miracles” about ten years ago, in the middle of a hellish monster subjugation campaign.
At the time, the Empire was suffering from a manpower shortage after years of continuous monster extermination campaigns.
As the daily lives of the Empire’s citizens deteriorated to the point of becoming unbearable, the imperial family sent a distant member of the imperial bloodline into the campaign and ordered the nobles to do the same.
The imperial family had set an example, so the nobles were expected to follow.
Most of the nobles did exactly that.
In other words, just as the emperor had brought in a distant nephew from a collateral branch of the imperial family to make a show of fulfilling his duty, most nobles either paid money to avoid service or hastily sent someone in their place, often by adopting a child.
The Vellaon Ducal Family’s situation was similar to the latter.
Though this had not been the duke’s intention.
Marceus Vellaon, Duke of Vellaon.
A man who had once been called a war hero and the sword of the Empire.
As a proud knight, he had believed that at least one of his direct descendants would volunteer for the Imperial Army.
However, all of his children refused military service, each coming up with one excuse or another.
“I raised these useless children all this time…… If only Cedric were still alive…….”
His close nephews were no different.
And eventually, the turn came to Cain, the son of his cousin.
Deeply devastated, the duke summoned Cain, the only member of the Vellaon family who had not fled and had accepted military service.
“You said your name was Cain? How old are you?”
“I’m sixteen.”
“You’re not even an adult yet……. If you return alive, I’ll grant you a title. I’ll treat you better than my own children.”
The duke arranged for sixteen-year-old Cain to enter the Imperial Army at an intermediate rank rather than as a low-ranking soldier, so that he could serve comfortably and return home safely.
Under normal circumstances, Cain would have been able to fight from the middle ranks and return without too much trouble.
But there was one problem.
The higher-ranking officers began fleeing one after another.
Before he knew it, Cain had become the commander leading the remaining subjugation forces.
At just sixteen years old.
And in his very first battle.
Cain gritted his teeth and continued fighting.
There was nothing else he could do.
Miraculously, he managed to command the knights and drive a swarm of Basilisk Wyrms into a valley.
He then blew up the valley using fire arrows and barrels of oil.
Finally, he succeeded in entering the wreckage alone and driving an arrow into the heart of the Basilisk Wyrm Queen.
With the subjugation force’s objective achieved and victory secured, Cain collapsed after being covered in deadly poison.
For a long time, no one came.
Just as he had given up on everything and was preparing to accept death, unfamiliar voices began to reach him through his fading consciousness.
“Oh my, what’s this? Why is the Basilisk Wyrm Queen here? She wasn’t supposed to die at this point according to the setting…….”
“Basilisk! Poison spraaaay! It did it.”
They were the voices of a woman and a child.
