Chapter Ninety: Orphans’ Request 3
Three days passed without incident, and Karen continued working on the nobility’s requests together with Sara. However, when they returned to the alchemy workshop, Tim was sitting on the porch with his knees pulled up to his chest, waiting for Karen.
“Karen! Harald collapsed again! I’ll work for free, so please help Harald again!”
“You want to work because you want to become an alchemist, right? But yes, I’ll go.”
“I don’t actually want to be an alchemist—I just want to do whatever earns money.”
As he spoke, Tim climbed into the carriage. Sara sighed in resignation.
“Lady Karen, excessive charity can become poisonous, you know?”
“It’s less about charity and more that I’m curious about why Harald keeps collapsing.”
Three days ago, after Harald recovered, Karen had interviewed Jutta, the children, and Harald himself. The results confirmed that Harald truly ate only the same food as everyone else. Unlike Tim, he didn’t seem like the type of child who would eat things he found, so this was likely true.
“I wonder if it’s some kind of allergy. That would be my first time seeing one.”
In this world, that is. That was why Karen wanted to confirm it for her future work as well.
“An all-er-gy?”
“What’s that?”
Sara and Tim tilted their heads in confusion. Karen pondered how to explain as she began speaking.
“There are people who can’t eat foods that everyone else can eat normally. When they eat those foods, their bodies react strangely—they get itchy, vomit or their throats swell up and block their airways so they can’t breathe.”
“T-There are people like that?”
“It’s not so much that such people exist, but rather that anyone can potentially develop allergies. They say you’re more likely to develop them if you eat the same things all the time or apply food to your skin.”
“Lady Karen, specifically what kinds of foods are you referring to?”
“It could be anything. Eggs, nuts, and even wheat are impossible for some people. I’ve even heard of people who can’t handle water.”
“Those aren’t poisons, right? How can something that isn’t poison cause…?”
Sara was dumbfounded. Born and raised in this world, she had never heard of allergy-like symptoms before. Karen had thought it might be a world without allergies, but perhaps allergies simply weren’t recognized as such here.
When the carriage arrived at the orphanage, Tim jumped out and ran ahead to announce their arrival. Karen smiled wryly, imagining Jutta holding her head in exasperation.
“Phew.”
Karen took a deep breath. It would be premature to conclude it was definitely an allergy. With only incomplete knowledge, she needed to avoid making assumptions. As Karen stepped out of the carriage with renewed focus, Sara followed and said:
“Do you think this ‘allergy’ occurs because of low magical powers rank?”
“Huh? Magical powers? I don’t think they’re related, but why do you ask?”
“Children with less magical power are more vulnerable to poison, right? So I wondered if it’s related.”
Karen was stunned by Sara’s words.
“…People with less magical powers are more vulnerable to poison?”
“Yes. Among the Ehlertt family’s maids, I had the least magical power, so I was valued as a food taster.”
As Sara spoke with a somewhat proud tone, several facts connected in Karen’s mind, sending a shiver down her spine.
“This isn’t an allergy after all.”
“Lady Karen… are you smiling?”
Apparently, Karen had been smiling without realizing it. Thanks to Sara’s insight, she’d had a revelation that made her heart race with excitement, making her too restless to stand still.
“Come after me! I’m going ahead!”
“Lady Karen!?”
Sara followed as Karen ran ahead. Karen rushed into the infirmary, ignoring Harald who was vomiting into a bucket, and thrust a detox tea into Jutta’s hands.
“Karen!?”
“Use this! I’ll explain more later!”
Karen immediately dashed out of the infirmary, found Tim, and made a request.
“Tim! Bring me what Harald ate!”
“It’s just mushroom porridge…”
“Give it to me! And bring empty magic stones too!”
Though confused, Tim followed her instructions and brought the grilled mushrooms and empty magic stones. Karen took them and rushed into an empty room near the restroom, then opened her bag.
“Lady Karen, what are you doing?”
“An experiment.”
Karen took out another bottle of detox tea, suppressing the laughter welling up inside her. She might have discovered something interesting. And she had a way to confirm it. Karen picked up a translucent magic stone that had been emptied after being used as fuel for a magical tool and began infusing it with magical powers.
“You’re not only giving away potions but even recharging magic stones yourself?”
“I just need it for my purposes.”
Karen continued infusing one magic stone after another with her magical powers. Manually infusing magic stones was inefficient. For everyday magical tools that used low-quality magic stones, it was faster to hunt monsters and harvest their hearts, which were magic stones. But what Karen needed now was precisely that inefficiency.
She welcomed the rapid drain of her magical powers throughout her body.
“Lady Karen, if you infuse any more, you’ll completely deplete your reserves. That would put your body at risk.”
“It won’t. I’ll be fine.”
“…You speak as though you’ve completely depleted your magical powers before.”
“I have. I’ve been practicing recently, quite a number of times.”
“Lady Karen!? You did such dangerous things alone!?”
“Natalia watched over me the first time.”
That happened during the promotion exam. Karen looked at Sara and grinned.
“You won’t die from depleting your magical powers, so don’t worry.”
“But Lady Karen… you’re drenched in sweat.”
“It’s exhausting. I’m still not sure if this is fatigue from using magical powers or if the body is strained from having no magical powers left.”
Karen answered with a deliberate smile to avoid worrying Sara. Recently, perhaps due to becoming accustomed to it, she no longer fainted even when completely exhausted from depleting her magical powers.
“Ah, why is it so fun when I feel like I’m on the verge of discovering something new…?”
Dripping with sweat while infusing magical powers into the stones, Karen said with a genuine, beaming smile. She squeezed out every bit of magic from her body, not leaving even a fragment in a single cell. After infusing the last drop of her magical powers into the stone, Karen set it down and picked up a spoon for the mushroom porridge.
“Well then, time to eat!”
Karen ate the delicious mushroom broth-filled porridge and waited for a while. Eventually, as expected, chills ran through her body, and she exhaled with satisfaction while breaking into a cold sweat.
“Just as I thought. These are… poisonous mushrooms… but I could eat them before… when you have more magical powers protecting your body, poison doesn’t affect you…”
Karen felt nauseous and rushed to the nearby restroom.
“Ugh… I feel sick… my stomach hurts… and my mouth feels strange too.”
“Lady Karen! Please drink this detox potion!”
Sara, who had followed her, offered the detox tea. Then, without warning, she shoved the bottle into Karen’s mouth.
“Mmph!?”
“If you’re going to conduct such experiments, please explain beforehand! It’s bad for my heart!”
Though Karen wanted to vomit from nausea, Sara forced her to drink the potion while holding her down. Karen struggled at first, but soon her stomach began hurting in a different way, making her struggle even more.
“I’ll wait outside. Please call immediately if you need anything.”
Sara, having understood the situation, said this with cold eyes and left. After thoroughly experiencing the detoxifying effects of the potion, Karen returned to the empty room. Though the nausea, dizziness, and stomach pain had disappeared, she still felt unwell. Since her stomach felt raw, her damaged digestive system likely hadn’t fully recovered.
“Lady Karen, here’s a healing potion.”
“Thank you.”
After drinking the healing potion, she finally felt her body return to its normal state. Still, various types of fatigue made her body feel heavy. Nevertheless, Karen spoke with a bright smile:
“Now I understand.”
“What exactly do you understand?”
Sara asked with an angry expression. The atmosphere suggested she would scold Karen if this wasn’t a major discovery.
“Our bodies are completely resistant to ordinary poisons as long as we have magical powers.”
Karen had always felt vulnerable, like a sheet of thin paper, when her reserves were depleted. She also knew that people with more magical powers had sturdier bodies. But it was the first time she learned that having magical powers made one’s body safe even when consuming poison.
“Are they poisonous? Those mushrooms…”
“Yes. If I made a potion with those, I could create a poison potion.”
Those red and white spotted mushrooms seemed familiar. She remembered mushrooms from her previous life that looked deadly but tasted good. Perhaps even that toxic face powder wouldn’t have harmed noble ladies because their bodies were full of magical powers. What had been harming them must have been something else entirely. But Harald’s case was different.
“I think it becomes poisonous only for children with little magical powers, even without turning it into a potion.”
Children with little magical powers probably had bodies similar to ordinary people in Karen’s previous world. That was why they succumbed to poisons Karen knew about. It seemed like an allergy, but was completely different. Karen was relieved she hadn’t jumped to conclusions.
That said, the situation closely resembled an allergy. In this orphanage, the poison was toxic only to Harald.
“When you think about it, feeding someone food they’re allergic to is basically the same as poisoning them…”
In her previous life, when her sister’s friend visited their home, that friend had a nut allergy. Though the friend gently refused, Karen’s pushy sister tried to force her to eat nut cookies. Karen quickly made pancakes, her sister’s favorite, and confiscated the cookies.
At that time, Karen had been in the upper grades of elementary school and simply thought, "She doesn’t want it, so stop already.”
But looking back now, her sister’s friend had thanked her profusely, seeming almost exaggerated, and later secretly gave her a can filled with pretty, sparkling candies. Her sister probably thought she was kindly helping someone overcome food preferences, but in reality, it was an attempted murder.
“So that boy, Harald…”
“Let’s go confirm with Teacher Jutta.”
As Karen and Sara left the empty room, they ran into Jutta coming down the hallway. After moving to the orphanage director’s office and questioning her, Karen’s prediction proved correct.
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