The aide burst out shouting as if he had been waiting.
“Count! Didn’t I tell you? That woman is a witch who came to harm you!”
“A-a witch?”
“What are you talking about?”
The servants who were standing by quickly stepped back from the sofa area, swayed by his incitement.
Then, the aide smiled triumphantly and gestured towards something.
“Now that we have witnesses who saw everything with their own eyes, you can’t deny it like yesterday! Come out, everyone!”
Two men emerged, walking through the crowd of servants.
Their eyes and cheeks were swollen and bruised, drawing a collective gasp from the onlookers.
They were the men I had encountered in Cassel’s prison.
‘I guess they didn’t run off naked after all?’
I smirked at their fully clothed appearance.
Despite my face being hidden by the hood, they seemed to recognize my expression.
They glared at me with a look of deep hatred as if I were their family’s enemy.
“These men are knights tasked with delivering meals to the prisoners in the tower, Count. Let them testify about the terrible things this wicked woman did to them today!”
“We were just delivering food to the sinner as usual. Then, suddenly, this woman appeared…”
“She attacked us with some kind of unknown black magic!”
Their testimony was absurd, but it began to instill fear among the people.
‘I should have just banned them.’
I knew they would run to Adam with malicious tales, but I didn’t expect to be implicated this way.
The mention of black magic stirred unrest among the servants.
But only Adam pointed out the ridiculousness of their excuse with an expressionless face.
“You mean to say that County’s knights were overpowered by a mere apothecary, and two of them at that?”
“We were caught off guard!”
“Yes, yes! That’s right! She’s quite skilled and dangerous. We need to deal with her immediately!”
All eyes turned to me.
The fear in their gaze was soon replaced by skepticism.
I guess it was because I looked too shabby and poor to be the ‘quite skilled and dangerous’ person the knights described. Damn it.
Seeing that people were not easily convinced, the aide quickly changed the subject.
“It’s not just them, Count! John and Matthew also had trouble while cleaning her room!”
“Count. As I reported this morning, they were caught stealing in the apothecary’s room.”
‘Oh.’
Unexpectedly, someone spoke in my defense during this chaos.
It was the head maid.
Though she had treated me like a smelly beggar after my tough fight with the mud monsters, she was indeed a fair and rational person.
The aide grabbed her as if catching a mouse.
“Be quiet, head maid! It’s not just them!”
“What, there’s more?”
“Come to think of it, some seem to be missing…”
The crowd began to murmur again.
“Two gardeners, three maids from the laundry room, and two knights who fainted on their way back from the training ground!”
Seizing the opportunity, the aide pressed on.
“Today alone, over ten people have inexplicably abandoned their posts during work!”
“My goodness!”
“Isn’t it suspicious? Moreover, 12 servants including the head maid fell asleep simultaneously in the dining room yesterday! And wasn’t that woman present there at that time?”
Pointing accusingly at me, he spat out his heated words.
The realization of yesterday’s strange event and the absences listed by the aide once again filled the faces of the people with fear.
“Let’s see you open that smart mouth of yours now!”
Having cornered me, the aide sneered and threw the ball in my court.
“Apothecary.”
Even Adam, who had been silent until then, looked at me with a cold expression.
“Do you have anything more to say?”
It was a challenge to make my final defense.
It hadn’t even been a day since we had agreed to work together, and now his attitude clearly showed he wouldn’t help me.
I glared at Adam, feeling betrayed.
‘That bastard, you could at least pretend to be on my side! Even the head maid is better than you.’
But I responded unabashedly.
“Yes, I do.”
“What, what! The audacity of her…!”
The aide was furious, but I didn’t care and spoke up.
“Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, there are people among us who have become hosts to parasitic monsters. I suspect there are at least ten of them.”
“What, what did you say?”
“Parasitic monsters? What on earth is…?!”
My shocking statement set the lobby abuzz once again.
The aide, not expecting me to reveal so much, widened his eyes.
“What nonsense is this?!”
“Of course, exterminating these monsters is simple, so don’t worry too much. I was secretly carrying out the Count’s orders to deal with some servants who had been acting strangely recently.”
My smooth words now made the aide look at Adam with a face filled with betrayal, much like I had just a moment ago.
“Count! What is this! This is not what we discussed…!”
As the blame was shifted, Adam shot me a cold glance.
I just shrugged.
‘Why pretend ignorance then? It’s disappointing.’
「 [Adam Hailey] disapproves of your words and actions. 」
But I pouted at the system window that popped up in my mind.
If only he had said something in my defense, anything like suggesting an investigation or questioning how a mere apothecary could do such things.
If he had shown me even a bit of support, I wouldn’t be acting so spitefully.
Anyways, this was all necessary to provoke the boss.
As I implicated the Count, everyone started looking at each other, visibly disturbed.
Seeing my calm demeanor, Adam finally sighed and played along.
“Tell us about this method of exterminating the monsters.”
“It’s this potion.”
As if I had been waiting for this moment, I pulled out the Sunlight potion from my pocket.
“It’s a potion made from the petals and stem of the Sunward Flower. If it touches the host of a parasitic monster, the monster dies, and the host will faint temporarily.”
“What, such a thing can happen…?”
“The ones who are missing right now are probably unconscious because I killed the parasites inside them.”
“Ah, that makes sense… Hannah and Marie wouldn’t wake up no matter what.”
Just then, a voice chimed in, corroborating my story.
Even in this chaos, I was pleased with the actions of the developers, who had stayed unnoticed within their usual areas.
‘Yes, it takes two to tango.’
Satisfied, I added with a smile.
“If I wanted to harm the servants, I would have killed them all while they were unconscious.”
“Don’t lie! How can we trust your suspicious potion?!”
As the situation turned against him, the aide lunged at me in desperation.
“If you’re so confident, show us then!”
“Uh!”
In a flash, he snatched the potion from me, popped the cork, and held it high for all to see.
“Everything she says is a lie! I’ll prove it to you, so watch!”
Then, he thrust the potion onto one of the knights who had been standing next to me.
Ssshhhhh!
As he was hit by the potion, black smoke rose from the knight’s body with a sizzling sound.
“Aaagh!”
With a death rattle, the knight collapsed to the floor, his eyes rolling back as his body trembled uncontrollably.
“Uuuuugh!”
After convulsing, the man eventually lay motionless.
“Jo-Joseph! Joseph!”
The knight next to him, pale as a ghost, hurriedly checked on his colleague.
Then, stiffening, he announced.
“He’s dead.”
A chilling silence descended over the Count’s residence.
However, that was short-lived. The lobby then erupted into chaos at the horrifying event that had just unfolded.
“What! Dead?”
“What is happening…?”
“She really is a witch!”
People started glaring at me with wide, fearful eyes.
‘I underestimated them.’
There was no issue with my potion.
It seemed they had prepared a few countermeasures while anticipating this situation.
One of them must have been the knights who had been hit by me.
‘That’s right. It’s better to die than be banned, I guess.’
Despite the fearful and gloomy atmosphere in the mansion, I looked at the dead man with detachment.
I wasn’t sure exactly what happened to a banned character, but I knew they’d be removed from the area’s character relationship network.
If they’re dead, they might still be alive in the other players’ games.
Since I was going to ban them anyway after this was over, it was a stroke of luck for the dead and misfortune for the living.
“My goodness, look at this! I only wanted to check if her words were true or not, and he died… Oh, Joseph!”
The sudden death of the knight began to lend credibility to the aide’s words.
In the midst of this, he was giving a soulful performance and even shedding tears while relentlessly pinning the blame on me.
“Monsters in the sacred Count’s residence where the Count himself resides?! If there were such things, wouldn’t this woman, who has killed a man, be the real monster!”
“Right, that’s correct!”
“It’s horrifying that a person has died!”
“Please deal with this monster, Count!”
As the tide turned in his favor, people began to agree with him, pointing fingers at me.
There might even be some of his minions fanning the flames in this chaos.
‘Tch.’
I clicked my tongue in the tricky situation.
A player being framed as a monster by a monster…
How humiliating.
‘Should I just kill them all regardless of whether Adam is watching?’
I had tried to avoid using my skills in front of the main characters, but the situation was getting too complicated thanks to the boss being smarter than I thought.
I guess I had no choice but to eliminate them all.
“St…!”
“Hey, apothecary.”
That was when it happened. Just as I was about to shout my stun skill…
Adam, who had been silent until then, suddenly spoke up.
“Do you have more of that potion?”
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