Chapter 18

Kaion’s routine changed completely. In the morning he practiced the Empire’s swordsmanship at the Academy, and in the afternoon he went into the imperial palace to receive the Crown Prince’s sword. That became his new day.

The Crown Prince Julian, thanks to Rian’s herbal tea, was freed from his persistent headaches and regained vigor by the day. He had always been cheerful and curious. Freed from the shackles of pain, he genuinely enjoyed sparring with Kaion.

“Kaion! Your blade is honest, but sometimes it’s too straight and breaks easily!”

“Your blade, Your Highness, is splendid, but there are many gaps within that splendor!”

Their sparring was more than simple training; it was a process of understanding each other and building trust between them. After the sparring, Kaion handed over the herbal tea, as Rian had instructed, saying it was ‘made with care by the household’s old maid’, and Julian repaid him by telling stories of the Empire’s history and politics. Kaion was cementing his place as the Crown Prince’s closest friend and guard knight.

As the light grew brighter, the shadow took deeper and wider roots.

Every evening Rian heard everything from Kaion, who returned from the imperial palace: the Crown Prince’s diet, the people he met, the subtle currents among the nobility, even the gossip among the attendants. That information was immediately passed to Old Fox and cross-checked with the network Argos had built in the capital.

“This is a gift bestowed by the Crown Prince.”

Kaion handed his brother the pouch of gold coins the Crown Prince had given under the name of ‘sparring prize money’. Rian poured that money into expanding Argos without hesitation. Old Fox’s organization had now extended its reach beyond back alleys to the palace’s low-ranking attendants, cooks, and stablehands.

Rian had a different, true goal.

‘The Crown Prince’s headaches. This is not a simple illness.’

He combined the imperial palace information Kaion brought with his medical knowledge from his previous life and reached one hypothesis: the possibility that a very small amount of poison, undetectable even by Divine Magic, had been administered over a long period. It was a clear assassination attempt against the Empire’s heir.

His hypothesis was soon proven a real threat.

One day, Old Fox came to Rian in a hurry.

“Agent, it’s serious! Strange rumors have begun to circulate in the capital.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“The rumor says the Aster family’s herbal tea is actually a product of Black Magic, and that the Crown Prince has been bewitched by it and lost his reason. Tracing the source of the rumors, they began from the mouths of those connected to the Reinhardt family.”

It was the counterattack he had expected. The Reinhardt family, unable to attack Kaion directly, was using public opinion to tarnish the Aster family’s reputation and sever its ties with the Crown Prince.

“That’s not all. A report from Kael of the estate says merchant traffic to the Aster estate has suddenly stopped recently. The Marquis of the Reinhardt family is applying pressure behind the scenes to economically isolate the Aster family.”

The threat was quicker and larger than expected. They couldn’t overcome this wave with the power of the herbal tea alone. They had to ‘cure’ the Crown Prince’s illness and expose those behind it.

Rian combed through information about the Crown Prince’s every necessity again through the newly built internal palace network. Meals and drinks were each inspected with poison-detection magic and silverware. There seemed to be no gaps.

‘If not the food…?’

Then, a small sentence written in the corner of a report caught Rian’s eye.

‘The drinking water the Crown Prince consumes is drawn every morning directly from a specific source in the imperial palace called the ‘Fairy Spring’. The management of this spring has been held by the Fontaine family for generations.’

Rian immediately ordered Old Fox to investigate the Fontaine family. A few hours later, the answer that returned chilled his heart.

‘The Fontaine family. A fallen baronial family, but for three generations they have maintained ties by taking a distant relative of the Reinhardt family as a wife.’

All the pieces fit. The poison was not in the food but in the ‘water’ drunk daily. Tiny amounts of poison, so minute that even divine Magic could not detect them, had been administered over years.

Rian’s gaze turned ice-cold. This was not a mere power play between families. It was a vast rebellion shaking the foundations of the Empire.

“I must find evidence.”

Rian murmured softly in the dark. Now the shadow, beyond taking root, had to point its blade at the heart of the great venomous serpent.