The Doctor Cured The Villainess And Ran Away-Chapter 45: Just the Two of Us (3)

Thanks to the golden rose Asella brought, I was able to enhance the candy.

―――――――――――

· Golden Honey Candy

· Effects upon consumption:

– Restores 1.5 HP over 6 hours from internal bleeding damage

– Reduces abdominal pain

It melts on your tongue like heaven!―――――――――――

A candy with excellent performance—restoring more health than it loses—was finally complete.

The moment I popped it into my mouth, I felt like I’d narrowly swerved out ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) of a death race.

Guess yellow roses aren’t enough anymore.

Thanks to Asella bringing back quite a few golden roses, I should be able to hold out for a while.

I’ll need to find a way to cultivate golden roses somehow. The only usable land in the Imperial Palace is the backyard of Moonlight Palace, so I’ll have to send some seeds home.

If I leave it with Neria along with instructions on how to build a greenhouse, she’ll probably cover a whole mountain in golden roses in no time. She’s a reliable little sister.

So in the end, I owe my life to Asella this time.

Really... after hundreds of regressions, you start seeing all kinds of absurd things.

I owed her a debt now—so I’d have to repay it.

“Your Highness.”

“Mm?”

“This time, I owe you a great favor. The grace you’ve bestowed on a mere court physician—”

“Shh.”

Asella frowned and pressed her index finger to her lips.

“I told you. I hate stuffy speech like that.”

“You did. Honestly, I do too.”

In ten years, Asella had become the kind of woman who would snap a noble’s fingers the moment they showed the slightest disrespect.

I guess she hadn’t tasted enough power yet.

“So how would Your Highness like to be repaid for today’s debt?”

“A repayment, huh.”

Asella rose to her feet.

Her grip on the staff tightened slightly.

“Las, are you going to become the best physician?”

“I don’t know about best, but I’d like to be the most famous one, sure.”

“Good.”

I wasn’t sure what the intent behind the question was, but Asella seemed satisfied with the answer she got.

“Then I’ll become the Empress of the Empire.”

“...Excuse me?”

I had no idea how she’d arrived at that conclusion.

Asella’s thought process was too far beyond a commoner like me to follow.

Seeing my stunned face, she pouted with a sulky expression.

“Isn’t that good enough for you?”

“No, not at all.”

If Empress isn’t enough, are you planning to unify the continent next?

If that happens, we’ll end up with new destruction routes, and the bad endings will multiply by the thousands.

[No. 012: Fall of the Empire – 30% → 8%]

On the contrary, the system notified me that the probability of the “Fall of the Empire” ending had decreased.

It meant Asella’s hatred for the imperial palace had softened—at least to the point that she considered it a place worth living in.

Most of the knights who had been present today had cheered when they saw her performance in the end.

She doesn’t show it, but Asella likes praise. That probably played a part in her deciding that the Empire could still be spared.

“I think I can manage one more Recall.”

Asella focused her mind.

After casting, the same hatchling from earlier flapped its wings and perched on her hand.

“This should be enough.”

Before long, a flash of light burst—and the fragile old cabin was blown halfway to pieces.

An old man stepped in over collapsed logs, brushing his ridiculous beard with a finger.

“My word, I looked everywhere. Couldn't you have signaled your location a bit earlier?”

Seymour chuckled heartily as he walked toward us.

“Master.”

“Thanks to you two, my vacation’s been ruined. Still, seeing both my disciples alive is a relief... though, maybe I should’ve arrived later? Looks like I interrupted something good.”

“Please don’t joke at a time like this. I’m about ready to collapse into bed.”

“Alone?”

“Of course.”

Seymour was asking strange questions again. The old man must’ve finally gone senile. Even Asella looked irritated, her face sharpening.

“If you’re ready, let’s go back. High Teleport.”

Seymour swung his staff, connecting six magic circles into a formation.

Another teleport... I could only sigh.

I was supposed to take the anti-nausea medicine hours before travel for it to work, but better late than never. I rummaged through my inner coat pocket for it.

“Mm?”

A lot of stuff was missing.

“It got wet from the rain earlier.”

Her Highness explained flatly, without a hint of guilt.

Right. Take it all, please.

After returning to the Imperial Palace, I ended up bedridden and groaning until the next day.

***

“A personal physician collapsing before his master? That’s just pathetic.”

Having returned safely to Moonlight Palace via Seymour’s teleport, Asella hurled verbal abuse at Las.

Las just coughed behind his mask, swallowing the insult along with it.

Watching him suffer from the aftereffects, Seymour cackled in delight.

“You’re done for today. I’ll check Asella’s mana circuits myself.”

“I couldn’t possibly impose on the Great Sage...”

“When I say go, you go.”

Asella ordered, and Las sluggishly dragged himself out.

Only Asella and Seymour remained in the Moonlight Palace study. Seymour grinned like a Noh mask.

“You must’ve put on quite the magic show, Asella. I heard you took down a Death Dragon.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s talk. The main delegation of the tournament is set to return tomorrow, I hear.”

“They’re returning tomorrow?”

Even after everything, the Emperor was intent on finishing his flower-viewing.

Well, canceling an annual event over a mere monster incident would’ve looked worse.

It might’ve given enemy nations the impression that the Empire had weakened.

She decided not to dwell on the fact that no one had come looking for her.

“Recall will be banned. A spatial magic seal will be placed on you. All mages who were present at the tournament will be included. I’ll probably be the one to handle it.”

“I see.”

Asella replied indifferently.

Seymour paced the room but didn’t sit. He couldn’t feel discomfort, so he never noticed it.

“The structure was clever. I figured only you could use it. You pierced the fifth circle through a higher-dimensional direction, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. As expected of Master.”

“No risk of Recall leaking to other countries. But the Emperor won’t see it that way. He’s grown fearful with age.”

“But someone transferred the Death Dragon.”

“It was Camilla, no doubt.”

The moment her name was spoken, silence fell.

Only two people in this world truly understood Asella’s magic.

One of them was standing right here. So the remaining suspect was obvious.

“There won’t be any proof left behind. The dragon’s nest wasn’t in the Middle Realm—it was in the uncharted region beyond the eastern mountain range. An unexpected location. It wasn’t even far from the tournament site.”

“...Why would Her Majesty do this?”

“To ask that, Asella, you first have to ask: why did Camilla come to the palace in the first place?”

Seymour spoke calmly.

“With this incident, it’s safe to say Camilla is your enemy now. You’ll need to be careful for a while. Learn to distinguish allies from foes.”

“Are you my ally, Master?”

“Ha! Clever little thing.”

Seymour smirked and tapped the top of her head.

“You know the answer. I side with the mage who has more value.”

“Yes.”

Asella knew Seymour well by now. He was a man obsessed with high-tier magic.

He wouldn’t show excessive affection, not even to his prized pupil.

“If you want a true ally, then take care of your physician.”

“Las...”

Asella thought of him and shook her head.

“I don’t know. What he’s thinking.”

“Do you know what you’re thinking?”

“Observation taints the unconscious.”

“But if you don’t observe it, you’ll never know. That’s what we call conversation, Asella.”

Seymour meant that she needed to have an honest talk with Las.

But Asella didn’t want to.

He was her servant, yes—but also her politically entangled fiancé.

She didn’t want to lose the upper hand.

She didn’t want him to know anything about her—but she wanted to know everything about him.

The notebook.

She thought of those strange sentences written in it.

“Master, what kind of person imagines the end of the world or their own death over and over again?”

“It’s one of two things. A patient... or a prophet.”

The unexpected answer made Asella blink.

“A prophet?” ƒrēenovelkiss.com

“Exactly. By preparing for every possible scenario, they can lie and say they foresaw the event once it happens. Ninety-nine out of a hundred prophets are frauds.”

“Hm...”

For some reason, Seymour’s words struck a chord.

“Then what about the one true prophet?”

“They’d have to be a powerful mage capable of using Clairvoyance.”

“Clairvoyance...”

Her eyes sparkled with curiosity at the new word.

“What kind of magic is it?”

“A time-based spell. It observes every possible future event that could happen.”

“Every possible event?”

“Heh, it’s just observing hypotheticals. It doesn’t mean you’re seeing the actual future. It’s a useless spell.”

“For example?”

“Say I roll a die. You’d think the result would be any number from one to six, right?”

“Of course.”

“But Clairvoyance would also show the die falling to the floor, breaking on the table, or someone barging in mid-roll. All valid events. Things that may have happened in other timelines.”

“So you can’t actually know what number the die will land on.”

“Exactly. You won’t know until you roll it yourself.”

Hearing that, Asella fell into thought.

Ultimately, it was magic based on the present to deduce possibilities.

If she were to become Empress—and even after—she’d be able to assess every political scenario.

It sounded incredibly useful.

“I want to learn it.”

“Do you now?”

“I’m going to be banned from using spatial magic anyway. You said I had a good sense of space and time, didn’t you?”

“If not space, then time, huh. Hmm, alright. I’ll have to dig through my old books. But rest for now. Your mana circuits are completely dried up.”

Once she learned Clairvoyance, she’d probably see countless future versions of Las dying miserably.

She’d record them in a crystal and tease him to no end.

Maybe he’d be so scared, he’d grab onto her skirts and beg her.

The thought made Asella chuckle to herself without realizing it.