Prologue

The emperor promised Jane.

If she could uncover the cause of the Ompupus endemic disease spreading through the vassal state of Andis Island and return, he would grant her an unprecedented position higher than the court’s first pharmacist.

Jane, who had come to Andis Island, was steadily carrying out her mission.

Without difficulty, flowing like water.

But crises have a way of arriving unexpectedly at unforeseen moments.

It was when Jane emerged from the hospital room where the patients were staying and walked down the corridor, tilting her stiff neck from side to side.

From the hospital room she was leaving behind came a loud crash.

“!”

It was surely the sound of people collapsing.

Not just one or two.

The moment she rushed back and flung open the hospital room door wide, Jane’s vision went dark and she collapsed with a thud.

Breathe…….

Can’t…… can’t breathe…….

The air was suffocatingly strange.

She could only gasp with shallow breaths while supporting herself on the floor.

She couldn’t lift her head at all.

She could only hear coughing sounds from here and there.

Even though she couldn’t look around, she could tell that the patients were also suffering as if choking on the strangling air.

It was when Jane was cursing inwardly at the sudden situation,

“Quite an interesting thing has rolled in.”

It was an unfamiliar low voice.

Jane trembled as chills ran down her spine amid her breathlessness.

Then someone approached with leisurely movements and tilted their head toward the nape of her neck. Their nose almost touched her skin.

“Despite trembling like this, I don’t smell fear……”

Then a voice characteristic of a predator, leisurely and somehow tinged with apparent pleasure, pierced through.

“It seems you’re not afraid of me.”

The unidentified man stepped back.

Soon the sound of people collapsing one after another was heard, and the air that had been choking their breath became much lighter.

As if telling Jane to lift her head.

Jane exhaled the breath that had been blocked and barely managed to raise her gaze.

“……”

But once again her breath caught.

The man whose black hair resembled the waves of night was truly ruthless yet possessed extreme beauty.

Especially his blue eyes.

Those eyes that seemed to have poured out all the blue in the world were languid yet overflowing with sensuality, making them far more dangerous than any trap.

But unfortunately, that wasn’t the only dangerous thing.

The man was sitting beside Kudkan, the elder of Andis who had lost consciousness and collapsed on the bed.

Holding a dagger that caught the moonlight in his long, elegant fingertips.

Jane, who had snapped to attention, looked around to assess the situation. Patients were scattered and collapsed everywhere.

……Damn, crazy.

Jane, who had been gasping as if her breath would get stuck just moments before, now felt like curses would burst out automatically.

The Andis patients were precious to her.

Each and every one was no different from a stepping stone that would place her in an unprecedentedly high position as a pharmacist.

While Jane looked around, the man observed her persistently as if trying to figure out her identity.

He laughed lowly.

“You don’t seem to be from Andis.”

Instead of answering, Jane looked at the collapsed Kudkan and then turned her gaze back to him.

She slowly parted her lips.

“……Were you trying to kill him?”

A smile appeared on his face as he tilted it to the side.

“If you want to stop me, go ahead and try.”

The playful smile that had seemed almost mischievous instantly became a wicked temptation.

“I could take your life instead.”

Jane felt no sense of reality.

Neither the air that had pressed against her lungs as if to burst them the moment she entered the hospital room.

Nor the maddeningly beautiful…… rather, the somehow mad-seeming, unidentified man.

But did he know?

“No.”

“……”

“If you were trying to kill him….”

The fact that the woman now sparkling her ash-colored eyes and pulling up the corners of her mouth in front of him was also subtly twisted.

“How about I heal him first, and then you kill him after that?”

At Jane’s unexpected words, the man laughed again.

Leisurely.

With a face quite stirred with interest.

Desian Lu, originally called a demon, and Jane, the court’s chief pharmacist of Febrya—

This was their first meeting.