A pinch of Esine leaves (3)

"Fuck, I thought I at least have the legendary golden hand this time," Adelaide mumbled in frustration.

Like a deflated balloon, the excitement she felt before was nowhere to be seen. All she felt was anxiety and the slight urge to swear and flip the tables instead.

It was finally her "tomorrow night". Alfred and his three friends had gone on their hunting trip. It wasn't 100% their idea – in fact, her brother would have avoided it if he could. It was because this hunting trip was considered a 'graduation ritual'.

It was a 'ritual' that the current Emperor created when he just sat on the throne. Unlike now, his seat was not that steady back then.

'Back then, even a light shake could have potentially thrown his ass down to the rock-hard cold floor.'

Politics can be illogical at times. In order to strengthen his grasp on the throne, the Emperor decided to create a 'ritual' in the grand name of honoring the Empire's ancient heroes – which was basically a requirement for the rich young masters to attend a hunting trip before their graduation. The better the performance, the more recognition they get as physically strong and capable young, noblemen. Sometimes, if done well, the 'winners' of the ritual could even nail themselves a promising marriage.

It was highly formalistic, so the noble families would never let their precious sons encounter any life-threatening dangers.

Of course, since it was the main campaign the Emperor used to strengthen his own powers, there were still rules to the hunt, one of them being the young masters must perform the hunt by themselves. Therefore, the participants' capabilities could still be measured somewhat fairly.

Adelaide thought the idea itself was bullshit, but she didn't complain, nor was she upset. The reason was simple – it had nothing to do with her.

'It benefitted him greatly like a president's election campaign. Who would get mad at the candidates for president doing their promotion thing?'

Nevertheless, the Emperor's meaningless hunting trip wasn't what gave her a headache. It was because she underestimated how cautious the duke could be.

Esine leaves were dangerous, not only because of their addictive ability – but they was also very fatal. If one consumes even just a pinch of it, the damage their body receive would be similar to that of a fatal blow's. After that, no matter how strong one was, it would just be a matter of time. The only advantage someone strong had over the weaker ones was that they would be able to endure longer, thus either gaining them a slim chance of survival or death that feels like an eternity of suffering.

'It's like coronavirus, but with a ridiculously high death rate.'

Esine was not the only way to make her 'father' of this life fall from grace, but it was the only method she knew at that moment with the highest guarantee. As someone who had always been doubtful of everything, it was no doubt that she would want something that could somewhat put her mind at ease.

"I'm anxious and was in a rush. I did anticipate some tight security measures, but I sure did not know, or even imagine, about this." Adelaide mumbled.

She was standing alone in a huge high-ceiling room filled with various similarly huge metal shelves. On the shelves were transparent bottles being stacked neatly. Inside every bottle were fine light green powder.

The powder was pure Esine leaves after being ground.

Moonlight shone in from the high windows down to Adelaide's silhouette, creating a long shadow that followed her every action.

Winford's main territory was rumored to be blessed by the moon since ancient times. If not, why would the moon favor the duchy to the point of bathing the land in its magical silvery light so often?

"The unmoving bottles aren't the issue, so is the unmovable cap. I don't really care about the alarms that are attached once the caps are touched or squeezed either." Adelaide continued to mumble to herself. "The thing is, how did he manage to get so many magical scales?"

Below each and every bottle was a thin and smooth piece of square glass-looking material. At first glance, one might not even notice its presence due to its high transparency, especially at nights when the scales could be considered almost invisible.

The good news was that Adelaide's vision was superb; however, the bad news remained: she had to think of a way to bypass the ridiculously high level of accuracy each magical scale possessed, and her mediocre brain was not equipped with any instant brilliantness.

'Staying anxious definitely won't help.' Adelaide thought while regulating her own breath, 'let's review the scales' properties first, shall we?'

Apart from the transparency, magical scales were not that vastly different from your normal, regular scales on Earth; it was just that all features were slightly enhanced.

For instance, they weight things, but the upper limit of these scales remained unknown. With pure aie stones serving as the heart of the power center, these small things could measure the weight of basically everything – as long as those things were measurable. But their seemingly limitless measuring ability was not the least of Adelaide's concerns – it was the scales' accuracy that matters.

Magical scales were 'magical' because even a speck of dust or sand is accounted for when measuring things. In short, if Adelaide took even one tiny dust of Esine powder out of the closed jar, the scales would know, and all the alarms would be triggered.

Hell, the alarms would be triggered already once she teleport one of her hands into the jar. As long as something is within the space of the measured object, its weight would definitely be accounted for. That was how scary magical scales could be.

Most merchants have a complicated love-hate relationship when it came to magical scales. They would not get scammed, but that also meant it would be hard to the point of impossible to scam others if one of these was in the picture.

'The thing is that these scales are expensive. I know we're rich and all, but this is basically a gold mine. That duke did not use all of the savings to buy scales, didn't he?'

'Even if I teleporting my hands in really fast and swap some of the Esine powder with normal sand with the same weight, there would still be a millisecond or so where the actual weight changes. The scale will definitely catch that.'

Adelaide sighed in frustration as if trying to relieve herself from her own thoughts that were going in circles.

'I hate to think about this, but maybe I should go back and think some more? Fuck, I hate myself at times like this.'

Adelaide realized that was too dependent on her own skills. At the set of skills that were not even originally hers.

'I should've checked out this room first. Why did I laze around uselessly again?'

That was because she relied on her out-of-the-ordinary teleportation ability. Adelaide bit her lips thinking of how she should have been more cautious, and how her cautiousness turned into carelessness and bit her in the neck.

In her mind, Adelaide knew that she 'lazed around' because she did not want to raise suspicions from the ducal couple. She was able to sniff out something weird from the duchess' occasional gaze.

'Now I might miss the best moment. But if not now, then when?'

Their looks made her feel uncomfortable as if she was sitting on a burning stove. The girl hated that feeling.

"No." Adelaide gritted her teeth while giving herself a quick pep talk. "I will not reschedule this. Tonight is the best chance. I will do this even if I have to take risks."

"I just have to find a way."

"Ah-hah."

Adelaide hummed in delight as her focus wandered towards one corner of the big storeroom.