Sir Gelland's stone face only grew colder. He wanted nothing more than to teach Zarek another lesson, but he couldn't get close even if he wanted to. It wasn't just about being scared, but in this world where they were catching magic users left and right—many of whom hadn't even been properly confirmed—even the appearance of impropriety was too much. So he preferred to avoid that at all costs.
Luckily, or maybe unluckily for him, the sound of footsteps rushing back caught his attention.
Two beauties raced into the room soon afterward: one, the business-like woman Zarek had come to know, and the other more like a delicate blooming flower who seemed to brighten the room the moment she stepped in.
One would think that the former was the elder sister and the latter the younger, but it was the exact opposite.
Zarek knew her the moment he saw her. Princess Sona. A pillar of this Dream Godsfall Tear.
He had found her so easily. Now, he just had to wait until the penultimate moment of the Tear to know whether he was meant to save her or kill her.
"Sister, this is—" The younger princess stopped, looking at the beaker on the ground. "What happened here?"
"I… I'm not sure, Princess. I turned around for a moment, then heard a crash. When I turned back, the beaker was shattered on the ground."
She frowned. That beaker…
The princess's head turned toward the table she had placed the beaker on. As expected, it was gone. But where was the liquid? What happened here?
She couldn't help but look toward Gelland oddly. Zarek couldn't move, and that beaker was far too far away. Now the liquid was gone, but it was shattered near Zarek? Was that just a ploy to hide what happened?
"You can go now, Sir Gelland. My sister and I will handle the rest."
"Of course." Sir Gelland nodded, a venomous gaze flashing toward Zarek before he left. He wasn't a fool. He knew that this situation felt odd.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been paying enough attention to realize that the broken beaker was exactly what the princess had been using earlier. If he had known, let alone sending Zarek a venomous gaze, he would be more worried about exactly how to reverse this situation.
"What's wrong, Su?" Sona asked.
"That beaker… it held the formula I used this time."
"Oh no, does that mean—?!"
"No, no. I always document which iterations I'm working on. It would be trivial to make another batch, but…" Su's eyes narrowed as she looked toward Zarek, but right now, the latter's head was hung low and his mouth still seemed to be leaking blackness. He looked completely out of it. Even if Sir Gelland had done something, the odds Zarek would have been lucid enough to understand were minimal.
"Oh, oh," Sona smiled after hearing this, rubbing Su's head. "Come, show me the formula."
Su pushed her sister's hand away, rolling her eyes. "It's here."
She reached for a notebook, flipped it open, and then handed it to Sona.
"Interesting, interesting. This seems like a variation on some of our poison formulas."
"I thought that instead of using them to attack, we could reverse engineer them to act as poison retrieval agents. Assuming the system really was an infection of some sort, hiding in the body via the same methods poisons or parasites might, we might be able to pull it out in this way.
"It certainly pulled out something, but I have no way of knowing it was the system. We also don't have the strongest methods of detecting the system in the first place, so there's no way but through trial and error."
"Little sister, this is amazing," Sona beamed. "Even if this formula isn't useful to the system, you've probably created the best universal antidote I've ever seen. Its potency is low, but it can certainly be tweaked and made stronger. This will be your merit no matter what."
Su beamed. She had thought that this formula would have potential no matter what, but this confirmation was a huge boost to her confidence.
"…There are two of you now?" Zarek's groggy voice filled the room, startling the two sisters.
Sona frowned, her flowery face turning a bit cold.
Ah, there's the elder sister, Zarek laughed to himself. It seemed Su was the cold exterior but soft interior type, and Sona was the direct opposite.
Zarek found himself to be very good at reading people. It was why most of his "risks" didn't really feel like risks to him. So he was quite sure he had Sona pegged immediately.
On the first walk-in, it seemed obvious that she was someone who should be saved. But now… it wasn't so obvious anymore, now was it?
Sona picked up a brush by the side, dipped it into something, and then drew a few strokes across Zarek's mouth. In an instant, he found himself muted, unable to speak.
"How fast do you think you could concoct this again? You know that when there's a new formula, it'll take a while for others to catch up. It'll take practice before we can make it like you do, so it'll be best if you do it."
"I have all the ingredients here. It won't take me more than two—"
Su paused, looking to the side where there was a bay of plants growing. But they were destroyed.
That was when she remembered earlier, while Zarek was coughing, that blackness had sprayed quite a distance.
Zarek chuckled on the inside. He might not know much about secondary professions, but that was in regard to their gritty details and actually executing on them. He knew how to pick out certain things of importance quite well. Like, for example… a particular Godsfall Herb that was both rare, an important ingredient, and hard to procure…
One that also happened to have a very distinctive scent even while mixed in with so many other ingredients.
Of course, the plants weren't actually destroyed—they just had the blackness of Lurker's Godsfall draped over them. But clearly, Su and her sister didn't know the difference.
Su's face fell. "This is my fault, Sona. I'll need more Candle Wood."
Sona frowned. "That'll take at least two days."
Su looked down to the ground.
"It's not your fault. Next time, you'll need more safety precautions in your lab. For now, we'll bring him to the enclave. He'll need strong supervision until we can confirm everything."
Zarek's eyes narrowed.
'The enclave? What are the odds Belladoll is there?'