42 — Chapter 42

Everything that happened during the next hour far exceeded Deborah’s wildest imagination.

Rather, it was beyond the comprehension of every single person present in the room.

Consequently, by the time the commoner maid had swiftly drawn every curtain, prepared a lamp that emitted a drowsy fragrance, stripped Deborah down to her chemise, and pinned her onto a bed scattered with aromatic oils and rose petals, everyone else was still watching in a daze, unable to move a muscle.

In fact, they had all been firmly seated on small stools for observers that had appeared out of nowhere.

“W-w-w-what… what are you planning to do to me!?”

“I shall expel the increased and aggravated Doshas and Ama from your system and restore the harmony of the Tri-Dosha.”¹

“Ha…?”

Though a scantily clad Deborah finally managed a weak interrogation, Elma’s grand declaration of total nonsense completely sapped her momentum.

While Deborah remained swallowed by the girl’s sheer intensity, utterly clueless as to what was being done to her—incidentally, the girl had reverted to her “plain bun and glasses” look, claiming “cleanliness is the first priority for a practitioner”—her opponent thrust a small glass toward her.

“First, please drink this.”

Pinned to the bed, Deborah stared at the glass while breaking into a cold sweat.

Where on earth had this been synthesized from just now?

Inside the suddenly appearing glass, a thick green liquid wobbled.

It carried a refreshing scent of lemon, but the raw, grassy smell of plant juice couldn’t be entirely hidden.

The suspicion that it might be poison crossed her mind, and Deborah tried to turn her face away in a panic, but the girl—who was now straddling her—tilted the glass back with a cheery “Down the hatch.”

Reflexively, Deborah gulped it down.

“…!”

For a moment, she expected a skin-crawling stench and taste—but to her surprise, it was sweet and refreshing.

It had the crisp, clean flavor of vegetables, perfectly balanced with the acidity and sweetness of honey, lemon, and apple. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it delicious.

And in the aftertaste, there was a strange, lingering sensation she had never experienced before.

Deborah reflexively drained the glass to the last drop before asking,

“…What was that?”

“My special detox enzyme juice. It serves to boost metabolism and promote the expulsion of waste products. As for the ingredients, I used carefully selected green and yellow vegetables, apples, honey, lemon—”

“Those are surprisingly normal ingredients.”

“And then, Euglena.”²

“Pffft-bwaha!”

The casual addition caused Deborah to spit out air in a grand spray.

Elma pushed up the bridge of her glasses and continued.

“I found them swarming in your pond, so I took the liberty of harvesting and processing them. The environment must be excellent, as they were growing quite splendidly.”

In a dead-serious tone, she praised the quality of the Frenzel estate’s Euglena.

“Eu… Eu… Euglena… those are bugs! You made me drink bugs!?”

“Well, one could call them bugs… I suppose they are bugs. They are organisms that wander the boundary between flora and fauna. Furthermore, perhaps due to the pond’s environment, these specific specimens were even shrouded in trace amounts of miasma, making the definition of whether they are ‘normal’ bugs somewhat difficult.”

“Wha…!?”

Deborah turned pale at Elma’s nonchalant explanation.

For someone who was Miasma-Weak, ingesting a miasma-tainted insect—essentially a Magic Bug—was life-threatening.

As she turned white and tried to force herself to vomit, Elma muttered “Now then” and pressed a finger firmly against Deborah’s forehead.

“We shall now begin the treatment.”

“!?”

Strangely, despite only being pressed by a fingertip on her forehead, Deborah’s body became as still as if it had been sewn to the bed. She couldn’t even twitch.

“Wha…”

“The technique relies primarily on manual manipulation. Since we are aiming for results in a short period, I expect the ‘healing crisis’ to manifest quite strongly and rapidly. Please understand that this is all part of the process of expelling waste.”

“Wha… s-someone… help…!”

She hadn’t understood a single thing this maid had been explaining. It was so incomprehensible that it was terrifying.

Deborah finally threw away her pride and tried to call for help, but—

Swoosh…

With a touch that could only be described as fluid, Elma stroked Deborah’s body.

In an instant, the ugly thoughts smoldering in her heart began to unravel and wash away, like algae clinging to a lakebed being swept clean by a current.

Slide… stroke…

Every time the hands moved gently along her muscles and skeletal structure, the strength drained from her entire body.

“Ah…”

It felt wonderful.

Deborah imagined a block of ice melting under the warmth of the sun.

The stiffness she always felt somewhere in her body was rapidly dissolving into nothingness.

Her irritation, her anxiety, her faint nausea, and her heaviness—the outlines of it all began to blur and fade.

‘It’s so warm…’

It was those hands.

They should have been small, slender hands, but the palms were enchantingly warm.

It reminded Deborah of her mother’s embrace from her early childhood.

Her mother, who had been called the “Sun of Frenzel.”

Being held by her, whose face was always graced with a cheerful smile, and being led by the hand; those days when she believed the whole world was shining.

A time when she lacked nothing, when she looked over the leaves of the vineyard with pride, vowing that one day she would protect these sacred lands just like the mother before her…

‘How nostalgic… I feel like I’m falling asleep…’

In a dreamlike state, she felt herself being pulled into the world of slumber, her thick neck lolling back against the bed.

Right then, the door swung open with a bang, and someone strode into the room.

“Hey, what on earth is happening here!?”

It was Lucas, his expression grim.

He had paused his information gathering before noon and was heading back to his assigned room when he discovered servants collapsed here and there along the hallway. Sensing an emergency, he had come running.

Despite her dream prince barging in while she was in nothing but her underwear, Deborah was so deep in a state of ecstasy that she could no longer find it in herself to care.

‘Ah… the world is… so warm…’

Lucas’s eyes went wide with shock as he saw the daughter of the Margrave lying there with a rapturous gaze.

Spotting Irene among the group of maids who sat frozen in place, Lucas shook her shoulder and asked sharply.

“Hey, Irene, pull yourself together! What in the world is going on!?”

“…Ah. Your Highness…!”

Irene, who had been watching the scene in a daze, finally snapped back to reality.

Pressing a hand to her forehead, she began to gather her words.

“Well… Lady Deborah used a ‘gouging mark’ on a vase… and Elma is ‘fuming,’ so she’s restoring the harmony of the Tri-Dosha to overturn Lady Deborah’s argument.”

As she muttered out this patchwork explanation, Lucas cut her off with a dubious look, declaring, “I don’t understand a lick of that.”

However, he was a man of talent himself. Having interacted with an “extra-terrestrial lifeform” (Elma) for two months, he displayed enough adaptability to produce a nearly accurate summary of the situation.

“…I don’t quite get it, but basically, Elma got angry at something Lady Deborah did, and now she’s giving her a massage with something at stake?”

“That’s it!”

Though Elma’s actions were too bizarre and Deborah’s expression was far too blissful to be summarized by the word “massage,” Irene nodded for the time being.

After all, even as she spoke with Lucas, the situation was shifting drastically.

Until a moment ago, Elma had been stroking Deborah with a touch so gentle it looked like it could melt anything it touched. Suddenly, she raised both hands, and in the next instant—

“Haa!”

—Whoosh!

With that shout, a tremendous gale whipped up!

“Kyaaa…!”

“Wha…!”

Deborah screamed, and the “gallery” led by Lucas nearly jumped out of their seats.

The source of the wind was Elma’s hands.

Those hands—which were supposed to be human—were stroking and rubbing the surface of Deborah’s body with such blinding speed they couldn’t even be tracked by the eye. The resulting wind was ravaging the room like a localized tornado.

No, it wasn’t random. This movement, which appeared to have no regularity at first glance, was actually calculated down to the smallest detail. Her fingertips, palms, and even the protrusions of her joints followed the flow of Deborah’s blood without a hair’s breadth of deviation.

With every powerful stroke, the things that had begun to melt inside Deborah were now surging toward the outside of her body with incredible momentum.

“The… the wind is incredible…!”

“Everyone, stay down! If you’re sitting, grab the legs of your chairs and crouch! Otherwise, you’ll be blown away!”

As the maids’ skirts fluttered wildly in the howling wind, Lucas barked out firm commands.

While shielding a few people nearby, he narrowed his eyes and glared through the gale toward the bed.

As a knight well-versed in the martial and physical arts of all times and places, and blessed with exceptional dynamic vision, he was the only one present who could recognize the movement of Elma’s arms and the effect they were bringing about.

Knowledge of cultivation methods from across the continent raced through his mind until, finally, he gasped.

“I see, so that’s…”

“What is it!? What on earth is happening right now!?”

“It’s Ayurveda!”

“Huh!?”

Irene, desperately clinging to her chair, let out a confused cry.

Meanwhile, atop the bed, Deborah was also in a state of utter chaos.

‘W-what… what is happening…!?’

Techniques that felt like being in the center of a storm. Deborah’s entire body trembled at the unknown sensations occurring within her flesh.

No, this wasn’t just a shiver.

Her entire body was undulating and rippling as if the earth itself were quaking.

It was like a tectonic shift.

Her flesh—which had become a cold, hardened, barren wasteland (to put it bluntly, her fat)—was currently being struck by shocks like divine thunder. Driven by the magma known as the “hot blood” hidden within, it was struggling to rise up.

The dark, desolate land was gradually being eroded and swallowed by the muddy torrent of magma, breaking into fine shards before becoming a great swell that raced violently through Deborah’s entire body—!

The moment Deborah vividly imagined the creation of heaven and earth within her mind—

—Flash!

With the speed of a streaking comet, Elma struck Deborah’s pressure points.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Startled by Deborah’s scream, Irene reflexively clung to Lucas at her side.

“What is it this time!?”

“Deborah’s Chakras have opened!”

“Whaaaat!!??”